Time Machine and External Hard Drives

[arthursiew]

I am looking for some external hard drives for Time Machine, but most of the manufacturers would sell the Mac-ready hard drives for a higher price than Windows ones. Some are Mac and Windows compatible. Will the Mac and Windows compatible hard drives work with Time Machine? Right now, I am looking at the following hard drives...
1) Western Digital My Passport Elite
2) Western Digital My Passport Studio (Mac-Ready, but more expensive)
3) Maxtor OneTouch 4 Mini
4) Seagate FreeAgent Go (Windows Version)
and some other ones.
Do you have some recommendations? Will any of these work with Time Machine besides the Mac ready one? Thanks!
Right now, I am more at looking at the Seagate FreeAgent Go (Windows Version). Will it work for OS X Leopard and Time Machine?

 

[todd2000]

Don't fall for "Mac Ready." It just means that the drive is formatted with HFS + (The OS X Filesystem) out of the box. Any External will work with Mac and Time Machine. You just have to format them as HFS + using Disk Utility.

 

[arthursiew]

Don't fall for "Mac Ready." It just means that the drive is formatted with HFS + (The OS X Filesystem) out of the box. Any External will work with Mac and Time Machine. You just have to format them as HFS + using Disk Utility.

Do you guys have any recommendations on hard drives that don't require any power from the outlet? Do you guys think that the new Seagate FreeAgent Go for Windows will work on a Mac and Time Machine?
Thanks!

 

[BLACK MAC]

I am having trouble setting up my external hard drive (WD My Book) to work with time machine. It's formatted to HFS+ (Journalled) and it always fails the backup. It mounts in finder, but won't go any further. Any tips on how to get this working?

 

[richard.mac]

external hard drive that dont need an external power source are BUS powered 2.5" notebook drives.