Dual external hard drives?

[jnagel]

I purchased a MacBook Pro this summer and I'm looking into purchasing an external hard drive to use when I upgrade to Leopard next year, to use in combination with Time Machine. I have 120GB onboard, so I don't need something extremely large for the backup. But I'd also like to dedicate a disk to my music library only. So I was thinking of either purchasing two external drives or purchasing one product with two drives enclosed.

Can anyone recommend what direction I go with this project?

 

[wyatt23]

you could just get stackable external cases. or you can get a doubly large single drive and partition it in half.

 

[xPismo]

I purchased a MacBook Pro... external hard drive to use... with Time Machine... But I'd also like to dedicate a disk to my music library... So I was thinking of either purchasing two external drives or purchasing one product with two drives enclosed... Can anyone recommend what direction I go with this project?

Well, until the time machine specs come out, I really don't know if anyone can say exactly what TM will require. I'm in the same boat as you, considering external backup/long term storage solution to my often abused and carried around work powerbook. I looked at some raid stuff (G-raid looked good, as did the OWC version) but I don't think my needs match well enough.

Until T.M. hits the streets, I guess I'm staying with my disc copy HD and burned DVD copies.

 

[hodgjy]

you could just get stackable external cases. or you can get a doubly large single drive and partition it in half.

I agree with the partitioning a big drive. Saves on money, space, and keeps an open usb or firewire port.

 

[CanadaRAM]

The sweet spot in hard drives right now is the 250 Gb and 320 Gb sizes. Buy an internal 3.5" ATA (IDE) drive , so you get the full 3 or 5 year warranty, and then put it into a good quality external Firewire case (MacAlly PHR-100AC) Partition it into "Backup System Clone" "Backup Data" and "Music & Media" if you like. There is no real rationale to having two physical drives for this type of use.

If you were looking for ultimate performance, you wouldn't go Firewire anyway, you would go with an ExpressCard SATA solution and external 2 bay SATA enclosure, like a Firmtek bundle, which would cost about $300 for the card and enclosure without the drives. If you were doing digital video or pro level graphics on the MacBook Pro, this would be the feline's sleepwear.

Thanks
Trevor
CanadaRAM.com