External HD for MBP - size?

[Harlowgold1]

I am wanting to pick up an external hard drive to backup my MBP. I am not a huge music collector and want it mostly for some programs I have purchased and many documents, presentations, and a couple hundred photos. My hard drive is 320 and I read you should double the backup for Time Machine. I was wondering if that was too much and if I should go with a WD Passport 320 as opposed to a 500gb? Any comments?

Thanks Jenny

 

[miles01110]

Generally the larger the drive the better the deal (decreasing $/GB as you go higher). If you can afford it, I'd go for the 500 or even 1 TB.

 

[ChrisA]

I am wanting to pick up an external hard drive to backup my MBP. I am not a huge music collector and want it mostly for some programs I have purchased and many documents, presentations, and a couple hundred photos. My hard drive is 320 and I read you should double the backup for Time Machine. I was wondering if that was too much and if I should go with a WD Passport 320 as opposed to a 500gb? Any comments?

Thanks Jenny

That is double the amount of data you have, not double the size of your internal disk. So, if the 320 is only half full then an external 320 would do fine. You can fudge this a bit and use a 1.5 factor and still do ok. But you do want to plan ahead.

But you really should buy more than one backup drive. Get at least two and rotate them keeping one far away in a safer location. The biggest cause of data loss is theft of your computer, and then fires, floods and so on.

Drives are cheap now. I bought a 1TB drive for $100. At that price buy two. If your business depends on the data then three and then buy a couple fire safes.

 

[evelocity17]

I have a 1.5 TB external and I partioned it to have 1 TB for Time Machine and other files and 373 GB in FAT 32 for Windows. Its probably overkill, but who knows I might get into photography and start taking thousands of pictures