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external hard drive question

B

brendel95

macrumors regular
Original poster
May 23, 2005
109
0
I am trying to usb external hdd for backup and have a very simple question

Do I have to buy mac compatible one?

I checked some of them like segate and maxtor. The box said that it is PC compatible and require windoz (no comment about the mac). Can I buy those and use it with mac?

Thanks in advance
 
Lacie and Maxtor sells some of their external HD modeles Mac compatible right ouf the box. But, those Mac-ready models are sold at Apple stores, CompUSA's Mac section, and other Mac retailors.

If you buy the PC ready external HD, you need to format the HD to Mac OS Extented with disk utilitiy. But, I would make sure the box says you can use it for Mac as well. Usually you can check the manufacturer's website for detailed specs as long as you can find the part # or item # from the merchant.
 
brendel,

One thing to keep in mind is this, if you think you may ever want to make a bootable clone of your internal HD and use your peripheral as a bootable drive, you need one that has Firewire. Macs cannot boot from USB devices at this time.
 
I don't neet bootable one (firwire). I just need to backup my data files from past. I will find details from company website before buying

Thanks for all the reply
 
I don't think you'd have any issues at all, as long as you format the disk to HFS filesystem. You could also partition and format the partitions as FAT32 if you're interested in sharing information between Mac OS X and Windows. When manufacturers mention Windows for external hard disks, they usually indicate that they provide a "driver disk" (which is required for older Windows operating systems, not for Windows XP).

I have made external drives of my own using USB enclosures and off-the-shelf Hitachi and Seagate internal drives - I have seen no issues using it with a Mac.
 
I would recommend a LaCie hard drive, used one for sometime now and have had no problems with it.
 
I like my Maxtor One Touch II that I bought off of Chrispy. It's USB 2.0 but it gets 15-22 MB/s write rates. I haven't tested read though. I love the metal cases of the Maxtor One Touch II. Otherwise for Macs go with LaCie.
 
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