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    External Hard Drives

    Discussion in 'Apple and Mac OS X' started by Ed H, Feb 17, 2012.

  1. Ed H

    Ed H Notebook Enthusiast

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    My wife just got a new MacBook Pro and I have been looking into backup software for her. It looks like a combination of Time Machine and SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner would cover all the bases.

    Will any USB or FireWire 800 external drive work or should I get a particular brand to make sure I can boot from it? After looking at the SuperDuper forum it seems there were/are a lot of drive compatibility issues.
     
    Ed H, Feb 17, 2012
    #1
  2. Yotsuba

    Yotsuba Notebook Evangelist

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    Well, I don't know if the newer Macs can still boot from FireWire, but I do know that they are capable of booting from USB. Just to play it safe, I would look into an external drive that is capable of using both USB and FireWire. Even if the drive uses FireWire 400, you can still connect it through FireWire 800. An adapter is just needed or a 400 to 800 cable. If you are in the US, check Other World Computing. They most likely have a backup solution that will suit your needs.
     
    Yotsuba, Feb 17, 2012
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  3. kornchild2002

    kornchild2002 Notebook Deity

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    My early 2011 13" MBA could boot from FireWire 800 without issues so I wouldn't worry about it. As previously stated, you can always purchase a USB 2.0/FireWire 800 hard drive if you want to play things safe. I would not get a FireWire 600 hard drive though, I don't see the point in spending extra for an adapter (to go to FireWire 800) just to get transfer speeds steadier than USB 2.0 but not necessarily faster.

    One thing to think about would be the file system to use when formatting the hard drive. I recommend going with exFAT simply because it will give you the most amount of freedom if you ever need to hook the hard drive up to a Windows machine.

    However, aside from that, any hard drive using a MBP compatible connector will work. You don't need to buy a special "Made for Mac" external HDD or anything special.
     
    kornchild2002, Feb 17, 2012
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  4. Magjua

    Magjua Notebook Enthusiast

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    Quick question, will a standard, used out of the box Seagate hard drive that I have been using for years for my Windows machine be recognized by the MacBook that is arriving today? Not sure of it's default file system.

    Thanks!
     
    Magjua, Feb 17, 2012
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  5. saturnotaku

    saturnotaku Notebook Nobel Laureate

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    Mac OS can read and write to FAT 16/32 and exFAT file systems. It can read from NTFS but not write to it. If possible, you should copy your data from the external drive someplace (the Mac's internal drive or elsewhere), format that drive to exFAT, then copy the data back.
     
    saturnotaku, Feb 17, 2012
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  6. Ed H

    Ed H Notebook Enthusiast

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    Thanks for the replies Datamonger & kornchild2002. I will look for a drive with both USB and FireWire.

    Time Machine and SuperDuper are reliable writing to an exFAT drive?
     
    Ed H, Feb 17, 2012
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  7. kornchild2002

    kornchild2002 Notebook Deity

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    I can't speak for SuperDuper but I know that Time Machine works with exFAT drives without problems. I currently have a 2TB drive (FireWire 800 and USB 2.0) that is formatted using exFAT (and only one single partition taking up the entire drive). Time Machine uses it without issues. I often take the drive over to my Windows nettop, plug it in, and access various other files on there without problems. I think the only issues Time Machine has are with FAT16/FAT32 formatted hard drives simply because they cannot store files over 4GB in size. I could be wrong on that one as I have never tried to use a FAT32 formatted hard drive with Time Machine (I don't have one and am not about to format one of my drives using FAT32 to test it).

    I imagine SuperDuper will be the same as the program itself shouldn't really care about the file format so long as OS X can write to it (unless you are trying to write files that are larger than 4GB each, then FAT32 will be problematic).
     
    kornchild2002, Feb 17, 2012
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  8. Mitlov

    Mitlov Shiny

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    I've got an inexpensive 1 TB iomega external drive that connects through USB 2.0, and I was able to use it to do a complete Time Machine restore after installing a new internal HDD in my MacBook Pro.

    PS Time Machine rocks.
     
    Mitlov, Feb 17, 2012
    #8