External Hard Drive for New Macbook

[a1sterling]

Hi Everyone,

I have a new unibody macbook and I plan on purchasing a 500GB or 1TB external hard drive and will be leaving it at my desk and having it hooked up through my cinema display.

Any recommendations, I'm willing to spend a bit more for quality (want to stay under $200)? I heard people complain about certain drives having issues when the macbook goes to sleep. Any thoughts on this?

Also, I'm a bit confused on something and would appreciate any information. If I have a 160GB internal drive and hook up a 500GB external with Time Machine, will all of that be used to back up the 160GB or can I use any of it for separate storage? If not, should I purchase a smaller, second drive?

Thanks in advance for any help!

 

[suburbia]

LaCie's drives have always served me well. Their Rugged 500GB is a great drive and have never given me any problems:

http://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?pid=11085

And yes, besides using the external hhd as backup via Time Machine, you may also use it as storage.

 

[bigdaddyp]

Also be sure to check out...

Owc sells some very well done firewire/usb external drives and some are also available as a add your own hdd as well. One of my favorites is http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/ministack/
but I have heard some good things about the macally aluminum hdd enclosure too. Although if you never plan to hook up to another computer that has firewire then you can save money by getting a usb only drive.

 

[Duff-Man]

Duff-Man says....I really suggest searching some of the existing threads about external drives as there are hundreds of them already - seems this gets asked a few times every day....oh yeah!

 

[miles01110]

LaCie's drives have always served me well. Their Rugged 500GB is a great drive and have never given me any problems:

LaCie doesn't make hard drives. You probably have a Seagate (or Maxtor) HD in it. I think they also used Hitachi at one point, but I can't remember exactly.

 

[Jon-Luke]

I have a similar setup to you and I use a 750 GB G-Drive Q

It looks like a Mac Pro: similar metallic casing and detailing which is really well built. It has firewire 800 if you plan to do video editing and I have had no problems with its read/write speeds.

When I'm not using it for video it sits next to my airport and works as a wireless Time Machine Backup drive (Connected via USB 2.0) granted this is quite a lot slower then the firewire 800 but it works in the background so I don't even take notice of it.

The drive has 2x firewire 800 ports, 1x firewire 400 port, 1x USB 2.0 and a eSATA port which I haven't had the opportinity to use yet, but I understand that they are faster than firewire 800.

One of the great things about the drive is that is has been designed not to need a cooling fan, so it is relatively quiet. I really reccomend this product. I haven't had a moment of probelms with it and it still looks as new as the day I bought it.

 

[instaxgirl]

I've got a Maxtor 1TB drive, just the basic model. Works quite happily, sleep doesn't mess it up.

Previously I had an Iomega drive, it wasn't so great. It didn't like sleep at all. Worst of all the power button sunk into the casing meaning it would rarely turn on and was a nightmare to get everything off before I exchanged. The Maxtor drive does not have a power button.

 

[MacAndy74]

LaCie's drives have always served me well. Their Rugged 500GB is a great drive and have never given me any problems:

http://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?pid=11085

And yes, besides using the external hhd as backup via Time Machine, you may also use it as storage.

+1

I was going to recommend that one. And it's 2.5" so it's quite transportable with a Macbook - the 3.5" based external drives require extra power, too messy for portability.