External HD Suggestions

[Clusty]

I'm looking for an external hard drive. It doesn't need to be anything special or fancy, and I only need one with around 250GB.

I was looking at the Wester Digital My Book's, but do they have to be formatted for macs to work with a mac?(Probably a stupid question)

Also, I have a MacBook.

 

[hollywoodmacguy]

Western Digital

I bought a Western Digital at my store a couple months back and I've been very pleased with it. I specifically bought it to back up my aging PowerBook in preparation for getting a new MacBook Pro as soon as Leopard is released.

Because I'm running 10.2.8, I did have to reformat, but it's my understanding that most Mac users running later systems do not have to do that. Have to say it was a little scary because at a certain point you erase the external HD and you have a choice of doing that or your own computer's HD and it's a little unclear which is which, but I made the right choice (I was on with WD tech support the whole time) and it worked beautifully. Took forever (5-6 hours) to back up, but that was because my system is ancient and slow and it was the first time I'd done it.

Bottom line: I'd certainly recommend it.

 

[showtime]

The My Book's automatically work with the mac since it is formatted fat32. But because it is formatted fat32 it won't hold any files larger than 4gb. You can also format to the same filesystem as your macbook pretty easily. Should take no more than 5 minutes with disk utility.

 

[Clusty]

Thanks for the replies. guys. That's interesting about the fat32/4GB thing, why is that? I don't think I have anything that's over 4GB, so it doesn't really concern me.

 

[sal]

i would advise against the WD mybook. I've had a bad experience with one. The enclosure died on me within a week and the turning off feature after the drive is not in use for like a minute, got very annoying.

for back up purposes it might serve you well but for anything else it's no good.

get the seagate externals. They'll work fine on the mac and they cost just as much as the mybooks

 

[Clusty]

i would advise against the WD mybook. I've had a bad experience with one. The enclosure died on me within a week and the turning off feature after the drive is not in use for like a minute, got very annoying.

for back up purposes it might serve you well but for anything else it's no good.

get the seagate externals. They'll work fine on the mac and they cost just as much as the mybooks

Wow, that's a completely different opinion. I'll check out the Seagate's.

 

[rogersmj]

I'll second the recommendation for Seagate drives. I've had a lot of hard drives over the years because I maintain a file server and the Seagate drives have been the most reliable by far.

 

[Clusty]

So, I'm looking at the WD My Book Essential 250GB edition, and the Seagate FreeAgent Desktop. I can't find any differences besides you all's opinions. So many choices!

 

[samuraikiss]

I'd recommend the Seagate FreeAgent external hard drives. I got a 500gb one for $120 a month ago, and it's amazing. The deciding factor for me was that Seagates have a five year limited warranty.

 

[Father Jack]

I use a 300 Gb Maxtor "one touch" (firewire connection) and have found it satisfactory and reasonably priced. I erased the contents yesterday and will use it for Time Machine ....

 

[adk]

I would recommend formatting at least most of the HD to the Mac OS journaled format. If you can see yourself sharing a lot of files with a PC you could partition part of it into FAT32 but as far as backup purposes you should go with the mac format.

Also, I view firewire as a near necessity (some may disagree) but in my experiences transferring a 5gb movie took literally twice as long over USB than the same file did over firewire.