need to buy a new external hard drive for storage

Lorna,

I would recommend you try "Other World Computing" http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/

I have a 1T external drive that I use as my Time Machine. Works perfectly. I've also upgraded my internal drive on my MacBook Pro on two occasions and the two 2.5" HD drives arrived well packaged and worked a treat.

Chris

Message was edited by: 2point5

Lorna from Hawaii wrote:
Chris, I will keep that place in mind, but in selecting an external hard drive for storage, what features should it have? Or is it just me choosing a brand and a gigabyte size?

Unless you're sure you'll never want to put a bootable clone on it, be sure it's bootable. Most are, but some, especially some Western Digitals, aren't.

Most are either 5400 rpm or 7200 rpm. The faster, the better (and, of course, usually more expensive).

Get one with it's own power supply, as taking power from your Mac can be "iffy." (And be sure to plug both into a first-class surge protector or, better, a U.P.S.)

They have to be formatted for the iMac, yes?

Most disks come formatted for Windoze, but nearly all can be re-formatted for Macs by Disk Utility. Most come with various software, sometimes including a proprietary backup app. If you don't want to use it, erase the disk completely and reformat it yourself.

And what is this thing about a faster and a slower FireWire port??

FireWire800 is, theoretically, twice as fast as FireWire400. If your Mac has a F/W 800 port, of course.

I have a WD 1 Tbyte green drive that works great. You can buy these for <$100 at stores like Fry's.
Seagate 1 Tbyte and 1.5 Tbyte drives have had some problems lately, might want to stay away from them.

Lorna,

The subsequent posts have pretty much covered it all as far as the Disk format, rotational speed and Firewire port speed.

Given that you have your Time Capsule as your Time Machine then having another external drive with the capacity of up to 1T and then wanting to have that backed up by your Time Capsule as well could present an issue depending on how much data you have.

Your Time Machine drive should ideally be some 3 to 4 times the capacity of your Mac HD to allow for the incremental backups that occur over time. The purpose of your Time Machine being a method of restoring back to a specific point in time so the space used on your Time Machine drive is a function of how much time has transpired and how many changes have taken place in that time.

If your Time Capsule is 1Tb, your other external drive is also 1Tb and your Mac HD is, say, 320Gb then in my opinion your Time Capsule is only sufficient for your Mac HD backup purposes. So having another 1Tb external drive needs to have a backup plan in place for it. Perhaps consider 2 500Gb drives and configure so that one of them is the backup for the other.

Carbonite is maybe an option. I have not investigated it in detail but it seems to me to be similar to Mobile Me insofar as providing an on-line backup process. It wont be fast like an attached firewire drive will be. The choice is yours of course.

Chris

I have a WD 1 Tbyte green drive that works great

Donald, I don't doubt for one moment that on your setup and for your requirements that is true, but please be wary of recommending WD drives to others. In the Bombich forums we are constantly having to break the sad news to users that their new drive is useless for their intended purpose. See (ignoring any references to CCC) this doc.


Andreas

That is, of course, terrible. You have my sympathy. The reality is, though, that that can happen with any make of drive. Be aware that LaCie do not make drives - they put drives into casings, with the drives coming from any of the major manufacturers. That means that LaCie drives are amongst the recommendable drives - neither better nor worse than other major brands.

There are two groups of computer users - those who have suffered a hard drive disaster and those who haven't... yet! I'm sure you already know the moral: backup, backup, BACKUP. You should from now on consider items not backed up as already on the way to being trashed.

As for help with your choice, I don't think you will easily find a bad word said about OWC.


Andreas

Lorna from Hawaii wrote:
Andreas-- my setup is this:

Time Machine does intermittent backups of my iMac hard drive.
1 terabyte Time Capsule receives the backup wirelessly.
Meanwhile, I had 2 external hard drives, Small Dog 125 Gig, and Big Dog 1 Terabyte. Big Dog bit the dust so now I have only Small Dog.

Nothing is backing up Small Dog right now. 8-(

If there's room on your TC, and if Small Dog is formatted Mac OS Extended, TM can back it up along with your internal HD. Just go to TM Preferences > Options and remove the exclusion.

I have almost no understanding of Time Machine. I once fiddled with it and did get some files I had lost but I didn't know what I was doing. This means I will have to finally delve into the book that I bought: Mac OSX. I know that some time is spent explaining it there.

You might want to review these:
Time Machine Tutorial
Time Machine 101
How to back up and restore your files
Time Machine Features

and perhaps the Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions post at the top of this forum.

Lorna from Hawaii wrote:
Oh-- that's a good idea (to back up Small Dog along with my internal hard drive).

But here is a question which might be way off base: Can I designate my Time Capsule as the place where I want my photos and iTunes to be stored?

Sorry, I don't know if it's possible, but that's not a good idea.

First, accessing them would be very slow, and excruciatingly slow while a TM backup is running.
Second, how would you back them up? Most backup apps won't back-up network drives.
Third, that would reduce the space available for TM backups.

Or since I can have Small Dog at 125 gig be automatically backed up via Time Machine/Time Capsule, would that be preferable to having my videos, pictures, and iTunes/music files be sent to that 1 terabyte hard drive that I am thinking of getting?

Is 1 terabyte too much? I simply want to make sure that I don't run out of storage space, which is what happened to my smaller 125 gig Small Dog hd.

Your earlier thought of getting two 500gb drives might be best, if the 125gb is near full. Put your media on one of them, then use something like CarbonCopyCloner, SuperDuper! or the like to back it up to the other one. Of course, that means once the media drive gets fairly full, you won't have room for previous versions of changed or deleted items.

Or, consider getting one additional external drive for your media, and a Blu-Ray disc burner to back-up your media. I understand you can put about 50 gb on a disc, and if you burn duplicates, it would be easy to take one to your safe-deposit box, workplace, realtive's house, or other secure off-site location.

I read the refereed article about the WD not being bootable, good point.
I use the 1T drive (along with two others not WD) internally in my MacPro. I guess I should of made it clear where I use it.
I also have a FW backup drive that I keep all my irreplaceable media on, it's a Maxtor drive mech.
I had bought and installed a new Seagate 1Tb and a week later read about the bios problems they were having. I took it back to Fry's and traded it for the WD.
My MacPro came with a 250Gb "DeathStar" that bit the dust after six months. Fry's replaced it with the ST250 and I added the Maxtor 320. No problems out of any of these drives for the past couple of years.
Because of beta testing, the Maxtor is my goto disk while the WD Tbye gets the testing stuff.
Because of past experience I would not purchase a Seagate or a Hitachi (death star) drive.

LaCie doesn't make drives. They assemble somebody's drive mechanism, somebody's else's bridge and electronics and a plastic case. You can goto Fry's and buy a drive,case with Oxford Bridge and you have a external FW drive. Tell me what exactly is better about the LaCie over the one I put together.

I use SuperDuper.