External Hard Drive (again)

[sionharris]

I have read through a couple of old External HD threads and got very confused. We have two 80GB MacBooks plus a 60GB iPod to back up, and I imagine I will want an extra 50GB+ for storing extra music that I acquire over the next few years. Therefore 320GB should suffice.

Any recommendations? (I live in UK so please consider this if you want to suggest particular deals.) Should I go for USB or FireWire and why? How easy will it be to connect to it wirelessly?

 

[michaelsaxon]

I typically buy the enclosures and hard drives separately and then build them myself, but I've seen some pretty good deals on Maxtor and WD models lately. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you'll need firewire if you want to make it bootable. All of the ones I've built have been USB 2.0, and I've never needed to boot from one, so I'm not sure.

 

[ghostee]

I have read through a couple of old External HD threads and got very confused. We have two 80GB MacBooks plus a 60GB iPod to back up, and I imagine I will want an extra 50GB+ for storing extra music that I acquire over the next few years. Therefore 320GB should suffice.

Any recommendations? (I live in UK so please consider this if you want to suggest particular deals.) Should I go for USB or FireWire and why? How easy will it be to connect to it wirelessly?

Connecting to the external hard drive wirelessly can be accomplished two different ways. You can connect the drive to one of your Macbooks, and access it from the other one over the network. Or you can go with a NAS (Network Attached Storage) drive/enclosure which plugs into your wireless router and allows both computers to access it. Keep in mind that wireless transfers are rather slow, and you may want to lug the drive between computers for any large transfers (I usually only use wireless for transfers under 10 gb, unless I have time to spare).

Firewire 400 is typically faster than USB 2.0 for sustained transfers. If you have a spare Firewire port on your Macbook(s), I'd recommend going that route. However, if both of your Macbooks live away from a desk, you may want to look into a NAS that also supports Firewire/USB.

I'm not sure whether it is cheaper to get an external drive, or an internal drive and enclosure in the UK, so I can't help there. I recently picked up a nice 400gb drive and enclosure from Newegg for under $150, and I'd guess there are similiar deals across the pond.