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Which external hard drive is best for a MacBook Pro (2009) ?

R

rustyness

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Apr 25, 2009
7
0
I want to buy an external hard drive for my new MacBook Pro (2009), and I want one that is fully compatible and runs Time Machine as well. I don't want to spend loads but I don't want a low quality, budget scrappy drive and, after searching around a bit, I narrowed it down to 2 hard drives.

1.) Iomega eGo Portable 250GB 2.5" USB External Hard Drive / Brown Leather

2.) Western Digital My Passport Essential / 250GB / USB 2.0 External Hard Drive / Midnight Black

The second is a Western Digital, which is renowned to be good for Mac users, and it is small and robust. The first one I think is good as well, but the main reason I chose that one is because I think it looks nice and, after comparing an Iomega and a Western Digital first-hand (Admittantly different models, but still) the Iomega seemed a bit more robust and slightly less likely to break. I won't be treating my hard drives roughly, but I want the most durable one with the highest performance.

Does anyone know enough to say which one is better or, if they are both not very good, do you know if there are any other good hard drives that are similar in price, similar in size and are robust and durable?

Thanks in advance...
 
The WD passports have always been good to me, as have WD drives in general. Were it me, I'd go that way. Use a case, don't play football with it, and it will serve you well.
 
rustyness said:
I want to buy an external hard drive for my new MacBook Pro (2009), and I want one that is fully compatible and runs Time Machine as well. I don't want to spend loads but I don't want a low quality, budget scrappy drive and, after searching around a bit, I narrowed it down to 2 hard drives.

1.)
1
Iomega eGo Portable 250GB 2.5" USB External Hard Drive / Brown Leather

2.)
1
Western Digital My Passport Essential / 250GB / USB 2.0 External Hard Drive / Midnight Black

The second is a Western Digital, which is renowned to be good for Mac users, and it is small and robust. The first one I think is good as well, but the main reason I chose that one is because I think it looks nice and, after comparing an Iomega and a Western Digital first-hand (Admittantly different models, but still) the Iomega seemed a bit more robust and slightly less likely to break. I won't be treating my hard drives roughly, but I want the most durable one with the highest performance.

Does anyone know enough to say which one is better or, if they are both not very good, do you know if there are any other good hard drives that are similar in price, similar in size and are robust and durable?

Thanks in advance...
Click to expand...

Those drives in my opinion should be used for traveling, portable time machines and if that's what you want, go with the Passport. I have used it for years as a portable drive for work (I'm an IT systems engineer) and it never fails for that purpose. It is a bit slow, no matter which drive you get, USB 2.0 is slow for my opinion for file work.

For serious back up and long term storage external drives using Time Machine as well as the fastest performance, I would go with WD MyBook Studio II. I use Studios with firewire, the speed is worth over USB 2.0 in terms of working with files on the drive with your applications on your internal drive, think iMovie|iPhoto, it would be too far slow with USB2.0 and not worth it.
 
techound1 said:
The WD passports have always been good to me, as have WD drives in general. Were it me, I'd go that way. Use a case, don't play football with it, and it will serve you well.
Click to expand...
That is one reason why I was considering the Iomega. It sort of has a built in case. I have heard that the Western Digital is very good in general and I was in the Apple store recently and they sold both the Iomega and Western Digital. I therefore assume that they are both highly compatible with the MacBook and are both of good quality since Mac tend to sell only the good quality products. Cheers for the advice anyhow.
 
rustyness said:
That is one reason why I was considering the Iomega. It sort of has a built in case. I have heard that the Western Digital is very good in general and I was in the Apple store recently and they sold both the Iomega and Western Digital. I therefore assume that they are both highly compatible with the MacBook and are both of good quality since Mac tend to sell only the good quality products. Cheers for the advice anyhow.
Click to expand...

Any external drives will work fine with any Macs. The only exception is eSATA, it is a bit too flacky on that end. By it's nature, Macs will work fine with any fat32 formatted drives. If you want to use the external drives only with Macs as well as the ability to store files bigger than 4GB, you need to format it as HFS+.
 
MikhailT said:
Those drives in my opinion should be used for traveling, portable time machines and if that's what you want, go with the Passport. I have used it for years as a portable drive for work (I'm an IT systems engineer) and it never fails for that purpose. It is a bit slow, no matter which drive you get, USB 2.0 is slow for my opinion for file work.

For serious back up and long term storage external drives using Time Machine as well as the fastest performance, I would go with WD MyBook Studio II. I use Studios with firewire, the speed is worth over USB 2.0 in terms of working with files on the drive with your applications on your internal drive, think iMovie|iPhoto, it would be too far slow with USB2.0 and not worth it.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the advice. However, I am a student and so I really need the price to be cheap and the hard drive to be portable, which is why I selected small USB 2.0 drives. If I had money, I would take your advice, but alas I don't. Thank you anyway.
 
rustyness said:
Thanks for the advice. However, I am a student and so I really need the price to be cheap and the hard drive to be portable, which is why I selected small USB 2.0 drives. If I had money, I would take your advice, but alas I don't. Thank you anyway.
Click to expand...

I understand, you should've explain that in your first post. I wouldn't have suggested it if I knew that.
 
i used WD Passport 250GB, it's doing fine for me, and very portable to carry everywhere..
 
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