Hardware :: External Hard Drives And USB Vs FW800
Dec 11, 2008
I have been using a MBP for a few months now and I am making a total conversion from PC user to Mac user in January when I buy a nice new 24" iMac but to go with it, I want to buy a couple of new external hard drives. I have currently got a Seagate FreeAgent 500GB USB Drive which is Windows Formatted and I will be keeping that to use with my work laptop (a Dell), and I have been really pleased with its reliability. Anyway, I have been looking around and there are some fab drives on the market but I have a couple of questions. If I get an iMac with a 500GB Internal Hard Drive, how big an External hard drive will I need to use Time Machine without having to delete backups all the time?
Also, I have been primarily looking at the new Seagate FreeAgent drives and the do a PC version (USB) and a Mac version (USB/FW400/FW800), but the 640GB USB version costs �76 whereas the 500GB FW version costs �100. Would you go for the bigger size or the added benefits of FW800? Will I notice much speed difference between USB and FW800?
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Apr 28, 2010
I recently picked up a couple of external drives, and decided to benchmark them to determine whether the interface and/or drive type made much of a difference. For those that don't want to read the details, here's the bottom line: If you're going to splurge on a FW800 interface, it's well worth fitting this with a 7200 rpm drive to maximize performance. Uncached sequential writes over FW800 were twice as fast on the 7200 rpm drive compared to the 5400 rpm. FW800 is a marked improvement over USB 2.0 as well. Full results are below. For background, when shopping for drives, I was interested in using the FW800 interface on the MBPs, for the simple reason it's rated almost twice as fast as USB 2.0. Some of the drives I was shopping for included 7200 rpm drives. My first thought was this was silly, since the interface limited the throughput to far-below the limits a 5400 rpm drive could produce, so why bother upgrading to 7200 rpm? Well, it turns out it does make a difference. I've got both a FW800 enclosure (G Drive Mini) and a USB 2.0 interface (Nexstar TX) as well as a 320GB 7200 rpm drive (Hitachi) and a 640GB 5400 rpm drive (Western Digital). So, I benchmarked both drives using both interfaces. Some interesting results! Turns out, the 7200 rpm drive does in fact dramatically improve performance in the FW800 interface. For sequential operations, Firewire has a dramatic improvement over USB 2.0; for random read/writes, drive speed seems to be a more important factor. And for large files, the combination of Firewire and 7200 rpm gives a pretty impressive throughput of almost 75MB/s. Full results are below. Note that the drive and interface are noted in the title bar for each drive.
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Dec 7, 2007
Could anyone recommend an external (FireWire 800) Hard Drive that they're using without issues with a Power Mac G5 (mine is a Dual Processor 2.3)?? I bought a couple of WD My Book Studio Edition but have no end of problems on FW800, and looking around here so is everyone else. LaCies seem to have similar problems, plus my own experiences in selling these and seeing FW ports falling off the enclosure's board, etc., puts me off them. Maxtors seem to have different issues and the new brown and orange Seagates are too fugly to even consider. So, anyone recommend a solution (250-500GB) that works fine with FW800 on a dual PMG5??
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Nov 12, 2010
This is in regards to the 2010 mini. I have been reading up on SSD, Hybrids and FW800 with a 7200. What is the easiest AND most effective/cost effective solution? If I went he FW800 route, can I use the same drive as my data storage drive? Will there be enough headroom to run the OS over FW and use the drive to stream movies playing in another room on Apple TV2 simultaneously? Will this give me a performance increase over the internal 5400 if I use the external 7200 for everything over FW800?
That is where my thoughts about the hybrid come into play. I know I can stream the iTunes content over USB2, which I have at the moment for the big drive. I would need to go buy an enclosure with FW800 to run it as a boot drive. I could use that same money and go get a 500GB Hybrid drive and install myself and leave the USB2 as data only. If the install is painless but tedious, I might just do that. If the FW800 route would be robust enough to run the OS and stream data to other devices simultaneously (ie use it as I would the regular internal drive), I might just do that and wait for SSD prices to come tumbling down and do a bigger internal SSD in the future.
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Feb 20, 2009
I have Western Digital Studio II (2x1TB, configured as 2TB). As I don't feel secure and wanted to make a backup of this HDD, I bought an identical HDD for backup.
Questions:
1) If I were to get a chance to start over, can I configure these two drives as a RAID cluster, so that whatever written on 1st disk, automatically mirrored to 2nd disk? Bear in mind, I'm using FW800 for both HDD in daisy-chained setup.
2) How reliable is RAID mirroring (software in leopard) using FW800 external drives, as it may subject to different 'connection/attachment' time to my iMac. Internal drives always on at the same time.
3) I tried to use CCC to clone the disk, the sustained speed is disappointingly at 30MB/sec read and write. If I did a copy from my internal HDD to external disk, I get easily 50-60 MB/sec.
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Jan 11, 2011
i am very interested in buying a Mac. But I need an external hard drive for my stuff. What are the best 1TB or higher external hard drives for a Mac Book Pro?
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Feb 2, 2009
I currently have a 2TB WD mirror edition that is setup in RAID 1 so it will mirror all my data. Now I also have a bunch of other drives laying around which I also feel the need to back up and currently I am doing this by doing a whole bunch of dragging and dropping and copying and pasting etc etc etc and this is making me very tired. I know that a setup is possible in disk utility but I am not at all sure about how to configure it so I wont lose any of my data.
Some details about my setup:
Mac OS X 10.5.6
PowerPc G5
Harddrives: two 1TB WD MyBooks, and two 500gig WD Mybooks --> these pairs need to mirror each other and make my life less of a hassle.
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Feb 25, 2009
I often use external hard drives to back up my work. Recently I purchased a 1TB Lacie drive. I took a week to build a lovely new file structure for my work. At the end of this week, I began deleting the old files on other hard drives so as to transfer my new neatly structured work back on. In the midst of this, the brand new hard drive crashed, illiciting only the clicking sound of death.
That hard drive, some of my work (a very small amount but still) and a week's worth of sweat and blood was gone in an instant. The person I took it to to look at it mentioned a power surge as being a possible cause for the crash. Anyway, I returned the lacie and bought a 1T Western Digital Mybook (silver). I then began dumping the old back ups onto this.
A week in and this one is crashed too. No clicking sound of death. It calmly sits on my desk with it's unceasing unblinking blue light and refuses to show up in utilities no matter what I do. So I assume it's a goner also. I'll return it also of course. Is something causing these drives to fail...that exists in my walls? Are there power surges causing my drives to die...? OR is it simply a case of bad luck with my choices of new drives?
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Apr 19, 2010
I was done doing various tasks on the iMac and when I decided to plug in the external hard drive for a Time Machine backup, the drive spun, but was never shown on the desktop.I also tried another external drive and had the same thing happen.
After rebooting (hey, this sounds like Windows!), the drive again showed up on the desktop and Time Machine worked fine.Is an external hard drive not showing up on the desktop a somewhat common issue?
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Apr 20, 2010
i'm cloning my mac hd (mac book pro, snow leopard) and though i've made successful clones, the sum of the hard drives (mac hd and external hd) don't match. for instance, my mac hd reads at: 233.71 GB, however the cloned external hd reads at: 216.54 GB. can anyone explain this discrepancy? are there certain things that don't go into the clone that are on the mac hd?
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Oct 26, 2010
Having chosen a useful large external hard drive I find it says 'Windows only'. Surely, though the software will not work, all I need to do is format the HD and it will work. The machine is: Seagate FreeAgent 500GB External Hard Drive USB2.0 16MB.
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Oct 29, 2006
I am relatively new to Macs, have been using it for 5-6 months. I already know how to do everything but share folders and drives using my network connection. I have an iMac and a Macbook Pro. I have a 120GB Hard Drive hooked up to the iMac via Firewire. How can I share that Firewire External Hard Drive with my Macbook Pro? What are the steps I have to follow to connect both macs? Is there a way that I could also share my iMac's desktop files with my Macbook Pro? I already have a wi-fi connection between both computers, I just don't know how to share that hard drive between both simultaneously..
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Feb 26, 2009
What is the best external hard drive with 1TB for the new Macbooks? I heard a rumor the new Macbooks don't have firewire... is that true?
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Jul 25, 2009
I have an external hard drive that I have been using for my Pcs, and when I hook it up to my mac I cannot write to it (although I can read from it). Is it possible to write to this external hard drive?
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Oct 4, 2009
I can't figure out the difference between these two hard drives, they look identical but Amazon says the latter one is the "newer" version, are they the same thing?
Which is the better buy?Also, Is it recommended I get a Mac formatted external drive? Does it do it automatically when I plug it in or is it easier to get a mac formatted drive?
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Mar 3, 2010
I have a fairly new iMac that I upgraded to Snow Leopard a few months ago. It seemed to me that prior to that my external HD worked fine with Time Machine. Since then it is recognized for a short period of time when I connect it, then it disappears. I replaced it with a WD My Book. It worked perfectly for a month and now it has shut down. Has anybody had run into this before? I can't believe that every hard drive fails within a month in the same mysterious way!
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May 10, 2010
I've had a LaCie Porsche Design for the last 6 years with no problems but with the upgrade to a MBP I'm looking to get a new portable hard drive (LaCie or another brand). My old LaCie was FW400 so I'd be looking at FW800 now. Which make and model do you use and are you happy with it's performance?
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May 25, 2010
My external hard drive has been corrupted and the error message is telling me to reformat it. However, through all the research I have done to find out how, everything I've found has told me to use Disk Utility to just erase everything on the disk to do this. When I try to do this, it tells me that I can't erase anything because the disk cannot be unnmounted. What should I do?
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Aug 2, 2010
I just got a brand new Mac Book Pro. I wanted to get an external harddrive for it. I have a gift card to HP and wanted to buy one from them? Does anyone know if they are compatable? If not, anyone have any suggestions for a HD that is good, but not terribly expensive? I want one that is at least 250 GB.
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Aug 14, 2010
So I just installed a larger hard drive in my macbook pro. As OSX was installing I decided to read reviews online (bought it in the store when I got the MBP). They're all really bad about using the drive in a MBP - [URL]. I'm installing the application software now and the hd is spining a lot and vibrating the case and making a lot more noise. I've read a few Seagate reviews and they're not much better for that size.
I want to install a huge hard drive because this is going to be my main computer for at least 8 months while I'm working away from home. Normally I have a desktop w/ a huge hard drive so I don't care what's on my laptop. Anyway, based on these reviews and how the drive has been feeling in the case, I think I might re-evaluate putting a larger drive in, and instead go with an external. I can fit all my photos and music on a 250, but I couldn't fit everything I store on my desktop on a 250.
So my first question is, is there a good, reliable 500gb or larger 5400rpm replacement hard drive for the mbp, that a lot of people like? And then the main question: I have a lot of large video files on my Windows box that are over 4gb, which is the FAT32 limit. When I transferred them from my old computer I had to rar them to smaller files and then un-rar them. This is quite annoying. If I'm gonna have an external drive, I'd like one that can be used on both windows and mac and support 4gb+ files..................
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Jun 30, 2008
Can Mac's be started up from external USB2 drives or is external startup limited to firewire only? I have several machines, IMac (all four flavors) Mac Book and Pro. I want to use Time Machine as the back to all of these devices but I hesitate because of this possible restriction.
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Apr 23, 2012
What's the best way to mirror two external hard drives connected to two separate computers on a network? Can this be done with the built in file sharing capablities of Lion or do I need to use a utility such as Forklift?
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Dec 10, 2014
Just bought new version of Final Cut and it will not recognize the external hard drive that I plug into my usb or the extra hard drive that I had installed into my laptop to do video work on for more space.
Info:
Final Cut Pro X, Mac OS X (10.7.5)
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Sep 6, 2010
Has anyone seen anything indicating that there are any new (higher capacity) drives on the horizon in with a 2.5" external FW800 format?
I'm slightly confused why many of the big brands have stopped at 500GB or 640GB drives in their FW800 models. The G-Drive Mini only goes to 500GB, while the WD Passport Studio stops at 640GB. WD do have 2.5" drives at 1TB, and have dine for months, but they're only available in USB2 models.
Any ideas why they all seem to stop short of their highest capacity drives for the faster interfaces? The only ones i can find with 1TB 2.5" drives are the Seagate GoFlex (which i'm not sure about with the swappable interfaces, i've nearly bought one a couple of times but then changed my mind at the last minute), or a couple of companies i've never heard of before who have drives way above the expected price.
Ideally someone will have seen news from WD or G-Tech or someone indicating that new products are on the way. Otherwise, i may end up having to get the GoFlex.
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Oct 14, 2010
Just updated to 10.6 from 10.4, and one of the first things I notice is that it keeps spinning up my three external harddrives at actions that should not set them in use, like starting an application or opening the trash. It seems pretty random, though I'm suspecting it has something to do with mdworker, quicklookd or both. If anyone knows of a solution that doesn't involve unmounting the harddrives, do tell.
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Dec 28, 2010
I have two hard drive enclosures: a Macally G-S350SUA, which has Firewire, eSATA, and USB 2.0; and an older Ximeta enclosure which is only USB, which I haven't been using. I have been using the Macally recently but I want to set up a second external hard drive so that I can use the Macally for data. Is it possible to daisy chain two external hard drives through USB, or only through Firewire? The USB plugs on both enclosures are Type B female, so I suppose I'd need a B/B USB cable, which I don't have, so I haven't tried it yet...
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Sep 17, 2007
This issue has been killing my work flow for quite awhile. I have a G5 dual 2.0. I can barely read or write files to an external hard drive. Say I try and copy 1.56GB of audio (12 files) from my external drive it will start to copy then stop at 500mb for minutes then start moving as normal and stop again around 900 for minutes.. then again at 1.4. This also happens when writing.
Here is the confusing part. This happens with two external drives (different models) with firewire 400, 800 and USB. I have reinstall OSx. I have repaired permissions and ran repair disc on everything. These hard drives work FLAWLESS with my Macbook Pro as well. Gr what can this be? It takes forever to copy data to or from a drive which is often how I transfer audio between my desktop and laptop. I should soon have Mac Pro money and this crappy G5 can go out the window. I am on 10.4..
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Jun 16, 2008
I just got a mac pro last week. The day i got it i installed a 1TB WD sate drive in bay 2....No problems it works great.....However, today i picked up 2 more 1 TB WD drives and attempted to install into slots 3 and 4... PROBLEM!The drives are showing up as external/firewire drives- not internal drivesCan anyone help with what i should do?Oh, and when i restart, they come up uninitialized.- But the problem anyway is that they need to be seen as internal
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Dec 28, 2008
I have 160.5MB on my HD, an I have done everything I know how to do to free it up but still nothing!I'm wondering, can I move the home folders to my external hardrives?
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Jan 17, 2009
After a fiasco with two firewire hard disks (the courier company lost them), I have to purchase an external firewire HD. Once the insurance company refunds my money (which can take up to 90 days), I still want to get the other 2 disks I ordered. Is there a limit on how many firewire drives I can daisy chain? I was thinking on having all 3 hard drives daisy-chained to my iMac.
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