External hard drive for back up.

[boricuawarior]

Hey, I need help buying a external hard drive for my macbook. Can I buy any one from any store? or I have to get the one in apple? Can I get the usb 2.0? Im looking at this one Hitachi 160GB USB Portable External Hard Drive for $40.
Thanks!

 

[sheepopo39]

I myself use Apple's Time Machine for backup. But you don't have to get one from Apple for it to work with time machine for back (that is what you meant right?). I believe it can be most USB HDs

 

[mynameisraj]

USB 2.0 is fine (mine is)

Any store is fine (got mine at staples)

Check out fatwallet or slickdeals, they sometimes post hard drive price drops (if it's not a rush)… other wise check newegg

 

[NewMacbookPlz]

There are some killer deals on the Seagate 320 and 500gb FreeAgent Go's, if you look around. Amazon has'em for $130 (500GB), and I saw a couple of specials at local Office Depots/Fry's for the 500GB for $99-119 a week or two ago.

That's the model I went with. I like it, but I wish it were as fast as my older Firewire drive (Alum. Macbook now). The one you buy that's not the "Mac version" will come windows formatted. You can just run Disk Utility on it, and partition it up however you like (Time Machine vs. Mac Normal vs. PC partition, etc) and then go to town with it. Personally, I made 3 partitions, just as I mentioned before, just to organize things better.

 

[sheepopo39]

I bought the time capsule and personally I like it

 

[mrkgoo]

Note, if you are using Time Machine, be sure to Partition it as GUID (or Apple partion map), as well as formatting it as HFS+ (journaled).

But other than that you can get ANY USB2.0 harddrive (I would think). The designations of Mac vs. PC external hardrives are basically just how it comes partitioned/formatted and with what included software.

 

[NewMacbookPlz]

Note, if you are using Time Machine, be sure to Partition it as GUID (or Apple partion map), as well as formatting it as HFS+ (journaled).

But other than that you can get ANY USB2.0 harddrive (I would think). The designations of Mac vs. PC external hardrives are basically just how it comes partitioned/formatted and with what included software.

For partitioning, at least with the Unibody, you can just select "Time Machine" as the partition type I think (I think that's what I did, I don't remember exactly). Yeah, any USB 2.0/Firewire/NAS hard drive should work, so long as it's formatted correctly.