Portable HD recs?
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- ********
Any recommendations for a portable hard drive?
Don't need more than 500GB really.
- pango0
USB 2.0? 3.0?
Thunderbolt?
Firewire 800?
Bus powered? or AC powered?
- ********0
....for simple system backup.
- ********0
What port do you recommend? Firewire is better than usb?
- In this order:
USB / USB2/ FW400 / FW800 / USB3 / ThunderboltMiguex
- In this order:
- pango0
I use up 500GB pretty quick. so i'd get a enclose and buy the hard drive separately. it's cheaper that way.
I'd go for this if you use USB 3.0 only. $40 bucks.
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/O…
And store your no in use drives here.
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/O…
- pango0
If you have firewire 800, use it.
I've heard USB 3.0 is potentially faster than firewire 800 but is hardly ever runs at peak speed. where firewire 800 runs at a more consistent speed.
if you have thunderbolt that's even better.
- ********0
Not sure what I need. Just looking for a simple and good quality one that I can backup my entire computer (iMac 2009) on without any trouble.
- pango0
well then your fastest port is firewire 800.
USB 2.0 is way to slow for backup.
There aren't that many firewire portable (2.5" + Bus Powered) drive.You have this guy
http://store.apple.com/us/produc…
This guy.
http://store.apple.com/us/produc…
and this guy.
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/O…holy shit the price has dropped quit a bit.
in this case lacie seem like a pretty good deal.
- syst_m0
Seagate.
- pango0
seagates is pretty reliable too. whatever you buy, don't buy western digital (WD)
- ********0
Think the question is how much longer are you going to hold onto the imac? If you had a PC you could bu a card. ..Try to get a drive that supports firewire800 + usb3 for future proofing if it exists. Firewire800 = about 70MBs vs usb3 630MB/s. Your regular drive in macs (which are Western Digital in a lot of them) usually get about 80-90MBs. Remember those are the bottleneck. You cant transfer to a backup drive faster than your current drive or the drive its going on. So firewire800 will only be slightly under-performing the drive potential.
As far as back up drives do you want to take it with you or just a secure home backup? Do you want expansion or a raided system for extra speed. Personally I use a ProBox that has 4 slots. And i personally like to use samsung drives. They were bought out by seagate last I heard so not sure how well they perform anymore. But my backup drives i have 3 2TB Samsung f4s 5400. Non raided keep it simple and they have about 110MBs which is very awesome for a 5400rpm drive. And I haven't looked at the price but a 2TB disk when I bought like a year ago was 75 bucks.
Also I heard USB3 is getting a boost in the thunderbolt direction middle of this year. So its on par with the audio/video all in one connection thing like thunderbolt. I dont know if that means new drivers or if its actually new hardware. I heard it uses the same port and all is backwards compatible..
Hope that helps or somethin.
