Choosing external hard drive for backup on iMac running OSX 10.4.11

I got the icon on the desktop OK. When I clicked on it, however, I got a message saying "The device is not compatible with this computer" or something similar.

• Exactly what Lacie drive was it?
• Were you trying to set up the drive with TIme Machine? TM requires it to be formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) - if the drive wasn't formatted that way, that would generate an error message like this.

the guy (who was the owner) said that he didn't think there were any external HDs you could buy that could work with 10.4.11, since it's so old

This guy has no idea what he's talking about. If he's the owner of the store, I'd be careful about any future purchases or advice from him.

• First, regardless of what kind of disk is inside the enclosure, if the enclosure supports any one or a combination of USB, FW, eSATA or Thunderbolt it will work with any computer that has a compatible interface. And the more recent & advanced versions of USB (USB 3) and FW (FW800) are backwards compatible with earlier versions.
• Second, Mac disk partitioning and formatting has hardly changed over the years. The biggest change was the advent of GUID partitioning. Apple hard drives can be partitioned as either APM or GUID and they can be used interchangeably on all Macs at least back to PPC Macs with 10.4 and probably much earlier. (Besides, GUID partitioning only really matters if you want to use the disk as a boot disk on an Intel Mac. )
• Third, regarding formatting, Mac OS Extended (aka HFS+) also has not changed much over the years - and it goes back to the late 1990's.

So I don't see any reason why even a brand new external hard drive wouldn't work with an older Mac unless there is a hardware problem somewhere.

I must concur with MartinR that the owner of the Apple Store doesn't know what he is talking about. I have never heard of such a thing as external disk drives not be compatable with a Mac just because it is running 10.4.11.

Allan

There was a post a few days ago about 1 TB disks and earlier versions of Tiger Disk Utility not handling the large drive and failing the format but reporting the drive as 7.3TB.

This was probably fixed by 10.4.11, but something to watch out for.

A couple of links

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1515844

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6023132

Thanks, everyone, for being so helpful! No, I wasn't trying to set up Time Machine--I was told (by another guy I trust) that you have to have (again) at least 10.5 for TM to work. Silverkeeper was recommended to me instead.

Well, Tiger supposedly could handle up to 16TB.

Maybe there was an issue with Disk Utlity on 10.4.something.

Yeah, I was just brainstorming without thinking it through when I mentioned TM, which requires Leopard or later. Sorry.

"Maybe there was an issue with Disk Utlity on 10.4.something."

That was my thoughts.