Best Hard Drive for Use With AirPort Extreme and Time Machine?

[dedeye]

Hello all!

I will soon be purchasing a MBP (when Leopard ships with all computers), and am looking forward to using time machine with an external hard drive connected wirelessly to the AirPort Extreme. Any recommendations for what will work best with this setup? I'm looking for something in the 200-400Gb range. Thanks for any info!

 

[italiano40]

simpletech hard drives is a good hard drive and works great with Mac OSX leopard beta

 

[CLuv]

Still running Tiger obviously, and I can't wait for the 26th. I am running an Airport Extreme Basestation Draft N (without gigabit), but I do have it hooked up to a USB 4-port hub in order to use my printer wirelessly and I have a Seagate FreeAgent Pro 320GB drive connected to the hub also for wireless use. It works great. No complaints. I use it to backup my purchased iTunes wirelessly through Backup 3.1.1 program, and I use it to backup my gf's My Documents folder wirelessly to the drive. Yes, I know flame on because my gf has a Windows laptop. The conversion is in progress.

You do have to format the drive for use with OS X, since Seagate doesn't make them for use for Mac's out of the box. You can use OS X's Disk Utility for that process. Took about 2 to 3 hours to complete that process. I went with Seagate since I've never had any issues with Seagate drives and they have a great warranty period.

Hope that helps.

 

[mkrishnan]

I know you said 250-400GB, but the Seagate 7200.10 500GB drive seems to be in the sweet spot for price/performance. That's what I use, very happily, as my backup drive.

 

[Trepex]

The Seagate FreeAgentPro is hands-down the best. Affordable, reliable, and comes with a 5-year warranty! It's also very easy to find online and at your local B&M. Check it out

 

[dedeye]

Another question...Is RPM really that important if I'll just be using the trive to backup data with time machine? Will a slower drive affect the speed of my computer at all?

 

[itsallinurhead]

OWC Mercury Elite!

 

[mkrishnan]

Another question...Is RPM really that important if I'll just be using the trive to backup data with time machine? Will a slower drive affect the speed of my computer at all?

In the sense that you need a 10k or 12k drive? No. But you should get a 3.5" drive because the price/GB is much more amenable, and almost every 3.5" drive on the market at this point is 7200RPM or better anyway.

 

[macleod199]

Another question...Is RPM really that important if I'll just be using the trive to backup data with time machine? Will a slower drive affect the speed of my computer at all?

The slowness of the Airport's network-protocol-to-USB-commands will be the bottleneck, the speed of the drive isn't going to help you there. It will make a difference if you ever use it directly connected to your machine, though.

I like the LaCie mini hard drive/usb hub:

http://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?pid=10813

It's designed to sit under a Mini, which has the same footprint as the Extreme, so it fits under it perfectly. It also has the built in hub, so you can connect a printer with a minimum of extra cabling (there's an included short USB cord to connect the stacked devices, so it's out of the way).

 

[/dev/toaster]

If you are looking for getting the most bang for your buck, Newegg has a few 500GB drives on sale right now .. most around $125.

I am going to pick up an AP:E this wekeend, figured it would be an easier solution for timemachine NAS. (Trying to phase out my Linux server, its getting up there in age)