External Hard Drive Advice?

[Macnator]

Hey everyone.

I might be getting a new external hard drive in the next little while to replace my USB 2.0 external. I will be getting one with FireWire. I have an iMac so that is no problem.

Now my questions are:

I have my eyes on a Seagate FreeAgent Desk for Mac 500GB. It has FireWire 400 & 800, but it does NOT have a on/off button (power button). My current USB external has a power button. What are the negatives to not having a power button? I will use it for TimeMachine and I don't want it doing hourly backups to the drive (since it can't be turned off).
I currently just turn my external on when I want to backup my data then I turn it off. Im not too fond of having it on all the time.

So if anyone has experience with external HD's without power buttons please post your thoughts!

Much appreciated!!

 

[blodwyn]

None of my external drives has a power button (Mixture of FreeAgent and MyBooks), but they do spin down after a few minutes which is fine. Periodically OS X will spin them up again, which causes a delay in what you're doing (file save/load etc) and which can be annoying, so I unmount (rather than eject) them using Disk Utility and remount them when I need to use them.

 

[brop52]

OWC Mercury Elite-AL 500GB 3.5" SATA External $135.99 plus $5.75 shipping. It does have a power switch and all I do is turn it on when I want to back up. I have this same drive for my aluminum MB in 500GB except that I have the ATA/IDE version. I bought the drives separately but I don't think they seem to sell the triple interface F800/400/USB as just the enclosure. You could buy the quad interface enclosure including eSATA separately and then add the drive you want. 500GB drives run about $70 on OWC. Though This Samsung 500GB HDD from Newegg is $54.99 and seems to be really popular.

Do you have any other computers? Are you sure you just want 500GB? If so, then I would recommend the quad interface drive and then buy a drive separately as that seems to be the cheapest. Enclosure plus 500GB HDD.

Your total would be $79.99 for the enclosure plus $5.75 shipping plus $54.99 for the drive and $8.55 shipping. Total cost: $149.28. The quad interface enclosure does include a newer chipset so I think that is why it is slightly more expensive. The good thing about the OWC enclosures are that you can swap out drives in the future if you ever want to exchange your drive. Keep in mind that by only spending about $30 more you could get 1TB drives.

 

[junior77]

Hey everyone.
I will use it for TimeMachine and I don't want it doing hourly backups to the drive (since it can't be turned off).

TimeMachine can be turned On/Off, just put the Time machine icon in the menu bar, and you can toggle it on/off whenever you feel like it.