MP 1,1-5,1 External self powered HDD USB2....?

[MarkC426]

I am looking at getting an external HDD (self powered) for my 5.1 cMP.
I have only ever had Lacie D2/Pro drives which are powered from the mains.

Wil the Mac Pro power an external HDD through USB2....?
I know drives are usually backwards compatible with older USB specs, and just slower, but the specs of the drive show this:

 

[weckart]

Any 2.5" buspowered drive will work, pretty much as the Mac Pro's USB ports aren't as underpowered as those used to be on Alu Powerbooks, where you pretty much needed to use a Y shaped cable drawing power from two USB ports.

All 3.5" drives will require external power. LaCie Rugged drives with FW400 and FW800 can still be found in Cex and those will be the fastest unless you put a USB 3.x card inside your 5,1.

CeX (UK): - Buy, Sell, Donate

CeX product details for the undefined

uk.webuy.com

Alternatively, just get a USB 3.0 caddy for less than a tenner and stick a cheap SATA SSD in it. That should work fine from one port and the seek times will be as fast as you can get over USB 2.0.

 

[MarkC426]

I was after a rugged mini HDD to use as an offsite backup.
These are 2.5", so should be good....

 

[MarkC426]

Additional query....
Is it unwise to partition an external HDD in both APFS and HFS+, or is it even possible?
This is for cloning purposes.

Not too sure these days what the preferred format is for spinny disks (it used to be HFS+ if not SSD).
Obviously my Studio is APFS, but I have my cMP (APFS SSD) cloned to a HFS+ HDD....!

 

[weckart]

Additional query....
Is it unwise to partition an external HDD in both APFS and HFS+, or is it even possible?
This is for cloning purposes.

Not too sure these days what the preferred format is for spinny disks (it used to be HFS+ if not SSD).
Obviously my Studio is APFS, but I have my cMP (APFS SSD) cloned to a HFS+ HDD....!

You can do it. I have a spinner with both Snow Leopard and Catalina on it. It works but it's not the best idea for reliability although I have had no problems with mine so far. Rule of thumb: SSD - APFS or HFS+ and HDD - HFS+ only.

 

[h9826790]

Not too sure these days what the preferred format is for spinny disks (it used to be HFS+ if not SSD).
Obviously my Studio is APFS, but I have my cMP (APFS SSD) cloned to a HFS+ HDD....!

IMO, that depends on your usage.

e.g. If the HDD will be used as TM backup drive in Monterey, then APFS can work better.

In general, if you often use the "duplicate" function (clone a file on the same drive) and make minor changes to the cloned files, then APFS can provide better performance even on HDD.

However, APFS has many different versions. If that's an external HDD, and you will connect it to both Mac Studio and cMP. Then you have to make sure both Mac running the same macOS. Or the HDD only formatted by the older macOS. Otherwise, the older macOS may not able to read the newer APFS HDD.

But if your external HDD which connected to the cMP is only the clone of the internal drive. Then HFS+ is fine, and most likely can perform better.

 

[MarkC426]

IMO, that depends on your usage.

e.g. If the HDD will be used as TM backup drive in Monterey, then APFS can work better.

In general, if you often use the "duplicate" function (clone a file on the same drive) and make minor changes to the cloned files, then APFS can provide better performance even on HDD.

However, APFS has many different versions. If that's an external HDD, and you will connect it to both Mac Studio and cMP. Then you have to make sure both Mac running the same macOS. Or the HDD only formatted by the older macOS. Otherwise, the older macOS may not able to read the newer APFS HDD.

But if your external HDD which connected to the cMP is only the clone of the internal drive. Then HFS+ is fine, and most likely can perform better.

Very good points....👍

This drive/drives is to be used as 'offsite backup' for both my cMP+all internal data drives, and Studio+data drive.
I may go for HDD for cMP (all SSD's are HFS+, system drive APFS) and SSD for Studio (both SSD APFS)....😊

 

[MarkC426]

UPDATE:
I initially formatted my Lacie Rugged in HFS+, created 2 partitions and cloned a data drive to one partition.
When I cloned (with SuperDuper) my MacOS drive, the HDD had to be converted to APFS.

So currently it has APFS and HFS+ partitions, and seems ok....🤔

I am wondering if it would be better to convert the data partition to APFS to keep it consistent.
Both clone sources are SSD (APFS).

This drive will only be updated every 6 months or so, for offsite backup.