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Best External Drive For Mac
i have a Mac Pro and I am looking to get an external hard drive soon. This drive will be used just for Time Machine and to backup footage. I want a firewire 800 drive and need 1TB or 1.5TB would be even better.
Does anyone have a suggestion about ones you have been using with little problems?
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5 Replies
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External Drives are simply internal drives with a Firewire enclosure. I openned up a Lacie once, and it was the same Western Dig 160GB internal IDE drive that I had on my old computer.
Sometimes it’s cheaper/better to just get an internal drive and then buy a Firewire enclosure… that’s basically what Lacie and all those companies are doing anyway. Just be sure you don’t end up with a SATA2 drive with an IDE enclosure.
Television Producer
KTVF-11 Fairbanks, Alaska
video.ericbarker.com -
I do plan on putting in more internal storage. But we use external drives because we take material from location to location, and some are moved offsite into safe places in case of a fire or so forth. So external drives are a necessity I am afraid.
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That wasn’t what I’m saying. What I’m suggesting is that you buy an internal drive with an external enclosure. An enclosure is a shell that you put over a drive to turn it into an external device.
Basically, all an external drive is is a stock harddrive (like a Western Digital or Seagate) with a shell and little board with an IDE -> Firewire converter. They run about $20 at an electronics store, and will take just about any IDE drive that has a 3.5″ footprint (standard). Manytimes, you’ll pay up to $50 more for an external drive, which is just the same thing. All I’m saying is that you could save some money by buying an internal drive with an external enclosure, than buying a pre-built one like the external drives that Lacie sells.
Television Producer
KTVF-11 Fairbanks, Alaska
video.ericbarker.com -
I know what external drives are, I have over 15 of them. That is not the issue.
The price is not my issue either. I don’t pay for these upgrades myself. We use pre-made externals for the convenience and 5 year warranties. I am just wondering what is the best pre-made external for Mac?
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G Drives. If money is no option. G Drives.
FYI if you click on their link from this website you get 10% off, I wish I’d realised that sooner but them’s the breaks.
Not only do G Drives do the job, but they also look good, what more could you ask for?
I’ve had shady experiences with Western Digital MyBooks, if i can’t afford G Drives, I buy Seagates. I guess I would buy a Lacie, but it’s not first choice. If you’re going to put these together yourself, I’m currently checking out Hitachi Internal drives as I’ve heard good things, and as for 3rd party enclosures, I don’t know that much.
Any HDD can go bad, but I trust Hitachi, Seagate (Maxtor incidentally are now owned by Seagate), some people really like Western Digitals, but I don’t. (Having Said that, my current machine is based off 4 internal Hitachi’s SATA, a WD SATA and a Seagate IDE). So I’ll let you know which one dies first…
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