What kind of external hard drive do I have?

[Benjer]

Hello,
I just bought a "new" external hard drive from easybackupsystems.com. Basically, they take a new internal Western Digital drive and slap their own external case on it. They've gotten good reviews, but I'm cynical; I want to make sure that I do have the drive that was advertised. Is there any way to check out the specs of the hard drive (I have it connected via firewire). All I can find out from system profiler is the capacity.

Thanks,
Benjer

 

[Makosuke]

Well, the most definite way is to unscrew the case and look at what's in it; generally you can do that without breaking any seals that would void the warranty.

I seem to remember Disk Utility giving some additional data for externals, but I may be remembering that incorrectly, particularly if System Profiler doesn't tell you anything.

 

[myjay610]

Did you try looking in disk utility?

 

[adrake86]

Seagate works great for me just remember for format it for the mac. MOst come out of the box ready for a pc.

 

[Makosuke]

adrake86 does have a good point--if you're only using it on a Mac, and you haven't already, it probably came formatted for FAT32, and it'll work much more smoothly if you reformat it (with Disk Utility) as an HFS+ disk.