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Time Machine External Hard Drive question.

B

BrittQ

macrumors regular
Original poster
May 23, 2007
235
0
I will be getting a MBP soon and am looking at external hard drives.

I'm looking at an enclosure with two drive bays. I want to put a 750gig in one bay(to backup laptop and the other bay), and a 500 in the other. Can Time Machine backup the other bay along with my laptop hard drive?
 
Cave Man said:
As long as they are formatted as two (or more) volumes.
Click to expand...

Not only this, but you should ONLY consider buying an enclosure if it can show the two drives as different volumes and not only in a RAID0 configuration. The problem with RAID0 is that you lose all your data if either of the drives fail, so you're doubling your chances of losing data. It's not a big deal for a Time Machine drive, but you probably want to also use your drive for other things too.
 
Okay, Thanks.

I am thinking about this enclosure with a 7200rpm 750gig(to back up internal and 500gig drives) and a 7200rpm 500gig drive (for working with video).
 
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BrittQ said:
Okay, Thanks.

I am thinking about this enclosure with a 7200rpm 750gig(to back up internal and 500gig drives) and a 7200rpm 500gig drive (for working with video).
Click to expand...

I just want to point out that the enclosure that you're looking at won't work with a MBP out of their respective boxes since a MBP has no Esata ports. I'd reccomend searching google for OWC firewire enclosures. I'd give you a link but I'm on my iPod touch.
 
Just get a drobo

I just got a drobo and, except for the price, i couldn't be happier if you're looking into a drive for Time Machine that will never loose your data and is infinitely expandable then check it out. Here is a video on it:
http://www.drobo.com/products_demo.aspx
 
skemez1 said:
I just got a drobo and, except for the price, i couldn't be happier if you're looking into a drive for Time Machine that will never loose your data and is infinitely expandable then check it out. Here is a video on it:
http://www.drobo.com/products_demo.aspx
Click to expand...

The Drobo is nice, i used one for a few weeks but i did not like it myself. Its not the products fault in anyway it worked great, but it only came in usb and does not work great for me, i transfer lots of large files and need them to be able to do so fast.
 
Okay, here's the enclosure that I'm most likely getting shortly after I get my iMac (I will order on the 15th as long as everything goes as planned :) ).

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other World Computing/MEFW924AL2K/

I like this one because it works with USB or Firewire 800 (the best that we can hope for short of eSATA ports being added to everything).

P.S. I did find that you can buy an expresscard for a MBP which would give you 2 eSATA ports for about $90.
http://www.cwol.com/serial-ata/sonnet-tempo-express-34.htm
it's not something that I'd do but to each their own :)
 
Drobo users?

crazycat said:
The Drobo is nice,but it only came in usb and does not work great for me, i transfer lots of large files and need them to be able to do so fast.
Click to expand...

How much slower is a USB transfer? I'm thinking about Drobo myself. Thanks!
 
macpluslaptop said:
How much slower is a USB transfer? I'm thinking about Drobo myself. Thanks!
Click to expand...

Well backing up to my external took 4 hours with usb, 1 hour with firewire 400 and 50 mins with firewire 800. So there was a big difference, it does not matter if you only backup when you go to bed like i do.
 
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