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External Hard Drive

S

steve am

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Apr 19, 2014
10
0
Good evening all!!
I'm thinking of buying a external hard drive to back up all my photos / documents
can anyone recommend any good buys that are out there at the moment?
I'm looking for about 1TB and have a modest budget of around £100.

im UK based thanks
Steve.
 
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Honestly, they're all about the same in terms of warranty and failure rates. If you've got a machine that will do USB 3.0, then pick one out with that feature.

Western Digital and Seagate make their own drives and enclosures, while other brands such as Lacie and Buffalo don't manufacture the drives, but will design the enclosure and assemble the package.

Decide whether you want a desktop drive or a portable drive. Desktop drives will be faster and cheaper, but require external power. Portable drives should run from a single power/data USB cable.

In either case, you should be spending far less than your budget. You can either save some money or get a bigger drive. Check Amazon for some of the "best scenario" pricing. I'm in the US, so I don't know what other stores are around.
 
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For the record I use the following external hard drives with my Late 2012 iMac running Mavericks.

G-Drive 4TB.

Icy Dock USB 3 docking station and in this I use 3.5 inch hard drives which vary in age from around 8 years old to 5 years old.

WD Passport 2.5 inch external hard drive which is around 9 years old.

WD My Passport which is around 1 year old.

All these work with no issues whatsoever.
 
steve am said:
Good evening all!!
I'm thinking of buying a external hard drive to back up all my photos / documents
can anyone recommend any good buys that are out there at the moment?
I'm looking for about 1TB and have a modest budget of around £100.

im UK based thanks
Steve.
Click to expand...

You could roll your own so to speak. The drive in my sig was £140 in total including the 3Tb drive but if you substuted it for a 1Tb drive, you could get it down to around £100 and it's very rapid. I use it for multi-track recording so general storage/backup with a slower RPM drive would be fine and it has USB 3.0 as well as 2 Firewire 800 ports so it's 80Mb/s+ no matter what system you have.
 
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Some of the problems with Mavericks are system dependent, they'll show up, for example, on a MacBook Pro but not an iMac.

If it was me I'd make my own.
 
Fatboy71 said:
For the record I use the following external hard drives with my Late 2012 iMac running Mavericks.

G-Drive 4TB.
Click to expand...

Glad to see others using the G-Drive I think it fits right in to the way my iMac looks.Only thing I watch out for is making sure I eject it before turning things off. I did have to attach a small piece of paper over the bright light on the front of the G-Drive, it just was something I did not want in my face all the time.
 
Choctaw said:
Glad to see others using the G-Drive I think it fits right in to the way my iMac looks.Only thing I watch out for is making sure I eject it before turning things off. I did have to attach a small piece of paper over the bright light on the front of the G-Drive, it just was something I did not want in my face all the time.
Click to expand...

Yeah its a nice match for the iMac. Plus they are very sturdly built as well.

Yeah the LED is extremely bright. Luckily for me, the G Drive is on the right hand side of my desk, so its not in my direct view. Plus I don't have it switched on all the time. I tend to just switch it on when I'm taking a Time Machine backup, which is usually once a day, unless I'm installing something unfamiliar, then I have it powered on more often.
 
Fatboy71 said:
Yeah its a nice match for the iMac. Plus they are very sturdly built as well.

Yeah the LED is extremely bright. .
Click to expand...


Tell you what, a small piece of colored paper and some scotch tape will tone that white light down, then it will become mild mannered. I also enjoy that the G-Drive makes very little noise and does not get hot, like some others I have owned .
 
Choctaw said:
Tell you what, a small piece of colored paper and some scotch tape will tone that white light down, then it will become mild mannered. I also enjoy that the G-Drive makes very little noise and does not get hot, like some others I have owned .
Click to expand...

Thanks for tip, I might try it :)
 
steve am said:
Good evening all!!
I'm thinking of buying a external hard drive to back up all my photos / documents
can anyone recommend any good buys that are out there at the moment?
I'm looking for about 1TB and have a modest budget of around £100.

im UK based thanks
Steve.
Click to expand...

The Lacie Porsche drive is a very nice drive. I use the 3TB unit but the 2Tb is well within your budget see attached link to Amazon.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/LaCie-P9230...?ie=UTF8&qid=1398369855&sr=8-5&keywords=lacie
 
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