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Author Topic: Portable Hard Drives for Mac  (Read 3430 times)

pflower

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Portable Hard Drives for Mac
« on: June 22, 2009, 06:08:21 am »

Watching the new video on Managing photos I saw that Seth was using portable 1tb drives.

Can anyone point me to any manufacturers.  Looking in the UK I can find none of these - 500gb seems to be the extent available here.  The only drive I did find on ebay was a Lacie Rugged XL USB/esata drive which doesn't appear to be listed on the Lacie Website and is considerably cheaper than the 500gb versions which is odd.  I have had problems with Lacie Rugged USB drives before - they don't draw enough power from some Macbooks (not sure about the Macbook Pro) from the USB port.  

I would prefer firewire in any event.

Any suggestions?
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wittsend2

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« Reply #1 on: June 22, 2009, 09:20:15 pm »

I use an Other World Computing 500 GB firewire portable drive. The web site is http://www.macsales.com/
Hope this helps
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Frere Jacques

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« Reply #2 on: June 23, 2009, 11:21:08 am »

Does it need to be bus-powered...? I believe the XL line are full-sized 3.5" drives in the rugged packaging, so I don't think that they will be bus-powered. You will need to stick to 2.5"drives & yes, the current size limit is 500GB in that form factor. For info, I am using a 320GB LaCie Rugged with the late 2008 15" MBPro with no power/performance issues. Can you get G-Technology drives in the UK?? The mini is worth a look ( http://www.g-technology.com/products/g-drive-mini.cfm ) as is their whole line...

Good luck!
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mike.online

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« Reply #3 on: June 23, 2009, 09:58:57 pm »

I just got a 2.5" WD Passport Essential. seems to be pretty good.

dseelig

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« Reply #4 on: June 24, 2009, 12:40:43 pm »

I get the owc enclosures. Then I buy 2 identical drives at the same time from the same batch. If one has a problem I can swap out the boards and see if that is the problem and get at my data if something has not been backed up yet.
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Sigi

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« Reply #5 on: June 25, 2009, 04:03:58 am »

Quote from: pflower
Watching the new video on Managing photos I saw that Seth was using portable 1tb drives.

Can anyone point me to any manufacturers.  Looking in the UK I can find none of these - 500gb seems to be the extent available here.  The only drive I did find on ebay was a Lacie Rugged XL USB/esata drive which doesn't appear to be listed on the Lacie Website and is considerably cheaper than the 500gb versions which is odd.  I have had problems with Lacie Rugged USB drives before - they don't draw enough power from some Macbooks (not sure about the Macbook Pro) from the USB port.  

I would prefer firewire in any event.

Any suggestions?


Hi,

found this one on the UK Apple Store:

LaCie Little Big Disk Quadra 1 TB mit eSATA/FW/USB

MichaelAlanBielat

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« Reply #6 on: June 25, 2009, 09:28:59 am »

Western Digital never steered me wrong.
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LA30

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« Reply #7 on: July 21, 2009, 03:40:36 am »

I like these A LOT.

miniXpress825 S

The SATA is very fast and the 250GB/7200RPM 16mb cache is VERY cheap @ $148.00 USD

http://www.transintl.com/store/category.cfm?Category=2643

Storage up to 500 gb

Ken
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Jack Flesher

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« Reply #8 on: July 21, 2009, 10:36:14 am »

You might also want to consider the Voyager Q (or even a pair of them) and simple cases:

Voyager Q: http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/NewerTech/V...Hard_Drive_Dock

Cases: http://www.wiebetech.com/products/cases.php

Drives: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16822136317

Given the current low cost of 1TB drives (you can buy bare WD Green 1TB drives in the States for $89 right now, see link above), I would go to this solution today instead of my DROBO.  With the drives so cheap, I would simply do a full back-up of everything onsite, and keep a third redundant back-up set offsite.  A pair of the Voyager Q's and a supply of bare drives and storage cases would make this extremely easy and efficient, no RAID device required.  The downside is it -- as with any other single drive solution -- requires *you* to be disciplined enough to actually do the back-ups and keep the offsite set current, a non-trivial point IME...

Cheers,
« Last Edit: July 21, 2009, 11:08:57 am by Jack Flesher »
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