External Hard Drives

I don't have either of those, but still can't recommend them.

I'd avoid Bus powered drives, drives with chipsets/cases by the Manufacturer, USB2 drives since you do not have USB, & drives with 3.8 out of 5 stars...

http://www.amazon.com/LaCie-Porsche-Design-Desktop-302002/dp/B0055Q2VS8

I'd recommend something like these, since even FW/400 is generally faster than USB2, & FW/800 is twice as fast...

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/1394/USB/EliteAL/eSATA_FW800_FW400_USB

You're welcome, thanks, & good luck! 🙂

I have the Lacie P'9230 and it's great.

Backed up my entire system in under three hours (246GB) and now does it every day without me doing a thing, with Time Machine.

I'd second BDAqua's recommendations: get an external hard drive with its own power supply and firewire, which will be much faster than USB2. As for LaCie, I have two d2 Quadra drives and they're fine except for the fact that they are 5400 rpm which is slower than my desktop (7200 rpm), so it takes much longer to make a clone. I also have an OWC Mercury Elite Pro which is 7200 rpm and noticeably faster.

From what I hear, WD makes good drives, but it's the cheap enclosures that contributes to the problems and failure rate.

Make sure you test it occasionally to make sure you actually can restore with it. I don't use TM - I prefer bootable clones because I can control the process/timing and can easily test that it is working. And, they're bootable.

babowa wrote:

it's the cheap enclosures that contributes to the problems and failure rate.

And proprietary chipsets. But I won't even buy a WD hard drive. Their customer support is awful, in my experience.