Best External Hard Drive

[MM07]

Since I got my new Mac I have pondered Time Machine. I was thinking about getting a Time Capsule, but my router is in good condition.

I am looking into an External Hard Drive that I can use for two Mac's to use Time Machine. One is my MacBook and the other is a 20" iMac Aluminum.

Is there one that could plug into my wireless router and back up that way?

Your thought and suggestions are appreciated.

Also, how many gigs is enough? 500?

 

[MM07]

Here's a new question:

Can I hook up two Macs via firewire 400 to one external HD to back up using Time machine? I was looking at OWC and the drives have 2 firewire plugs.

Just curious and looking for advice from the experts. I really want to start using Time Machine.

TIA

 

[mac'in'toss'ed]

time capsule???? does anybody recommend that? i think it is tailor made for such situations...

 

[hotsauce]

Wirelessly posted (Apple Communication Device: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/4A93 Safari/419.3)

I'm waiting for the time capsule. Why the hell is it taking so long?

 

[TJones]

Well if it's built on anything similar to the Airport Extreme Base Station's hardware my money is that they're trying to sort out data corruption issues. That's what happens when you take an existing TM volume and plug it into a AEBS's USB port. Your Mac will see it and attempt to use it for the next backup and then error out with a message about corrupting data.

On a side note, I see a lot of people talking about getting firewire drives for their Time Machine but let me assure everyone that it is overkill. Once the initial backup completes the incremental backups don't take very long and I never notice when it's happening.

I'm using a FreeAgent 320 GB external USB 2.0 drive from Seagate.

 

[SDDave2007]

I just ordered a Time Capsule along with a new MacBook Pro... and the shipping date for the TC is only two days from now [Feb 29]. A friend ordered his the day after it was annouced.. and his shipping date is also Feb 29. So in the couple of weeks since it was announced the shipping date hasn't budged.

 

[SDDave2007]

Here's a new question:

Can I hook up two Macs via firewire 400 to one external HD to back up using Time machine? I was looking at OWC and the drives have 2 firewire plugs.

Just curious and looking for advice from the experts. I really want to start using Time Machine.

TIA

No.. you cannot hook up two computers to the two FW ports. I believe the second port is to daisy chain another drive. But the controller cannot take commands from two "masters"... but it can take commands from one "master" and pass them on down the line to another "slave"

 

[TJones]

I just ordered a Time Capsule along with a new MacBook Pro... and the shipping date for the TC is only two days from now [Feb 29]. A friend ordered his the day after it was annouced.. and his shipping date is also Feb 29. So in the couple of weeks since it was announced the shipping date hasn't budged.

Nice, I can't wait to read the first reviews on them. It looks like a great product.