Help Finding External Hard Drive

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tommyzot

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Aug 16, 2012
2
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I would like to preface this article with the fact that I'm not technically savvy, all that I know about hard drives are what my cousin has told me.

I am looking for an external hard drive for my Late 2011 Macbook Pro.

I am going away for college this year, and I'd use my hard drive for simple school stuff and storing movies. Currently I have a G-Drive Mini (500 GB, 7200 RPM, Portable, Firewire 800). However I only have 40 GB left of memory so I am looking to upgrade storage sizes.

I have a few questions to ask, my reason for posting this thread:

  • If my primary purpose for my external hard drive is playing movies off of the hard drive, does it matter for me whether the drive is 5400 RPM or 7200 RPM?
  • For my intentions of my hard drive, what type of connection would satisfy my needs? (Firewire 800, USB 2.0, USB 3.0)
  • Can you suggest any hard drives that could suffice my needs?

Thank you for all the help, I feel confused when it comes to this stuff and I'm hoping your replies can clarify everything. Thanks again
 
R

RedCroissant

Suspended
Aug 13, 2011
2,268
94
tommyzot said:
I would like to preface this article with the fact that I'm not technically savvy, all that I know about hard drives are what my cousin has told me.

I am looking for an external hard drive for my Late 2011 Macbook Pro.

I am going away for college this year, and I'd use my hard drive for simple school stuff and storing movies. Currently I have a G-Drive Mini (500 GB, 7200 RPM, Portable, Firewire 800). However I only have 40 GB left of memory so I am looking to upgrade storage sizes.

I have a few questions to ask, my reason for posting this thread:

  • If my primary purpose for my external hard drive is playing movies off of the hard drive, does it matter for me whether the drive is 5400 RPM or 7200 RPM?
  • For my intentions of my hard drive, what type of connection would satisfy my needs? (Firewire 800, USB 2.0, USB 3.0)
  • Can you suggest any hard drives that could suffice my needs?


Thank you for all the help, I feel confused when it comes to this stuff and I'm hoping your replies can clarify everything. Thanks again
Click to expand...
If the primary purpose of your external is to store movies or watch them from there, then it really doesn't matter what the I/O is and it also doesn't matter what the sped of the drive is.

Best Buy has a 1TB portable drive that should be more than sufficient and it's USB.

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/WD+-+My+Passport+1TB+External+USB+3.0/2.0+Portable+Hard+Drive+-+Black/4911796.p?id=1218575757942&skuId=4911796

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Seagate+-+FreeAgent+GoFlex+1TB+External+USB+2.0/3.0+Portable+Hard+Drive+-+Black/1305503.p?id=1218249066333&skuId=1305503

And if that price is too high, there are a couple of 750GB portables that are about $25 cheaper. And since you are already using firewire for the other one, then you could just connect a new one via usb and have both of them running at the same time. I would recommend the Western Digital since their drives have always been reliable. I even took a few of their drives on deployments and they worked great for years.
 
J

jefbond

macrumors member
Aug 27, 2012
39
0
RedCroissant couldn't have hit it more on the dot. No need for a 7200 RPM drive, and even for most if not all HD movies you should have no issue with even USB 2.0. The only time these will make a difference is if/when you're actually saving the movie on the external HDD if you originally save it to the internal HDD, but even then it won't take a significant amount of time unless transferring all your movies at once. As for just watching the movie, you'll never have to worry about it stopping to buffer.
 
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