MacBook Pro :: External Storage And Backup - Get Expresscard / Enclosure?
Aug 15, 2010
I just bought a MBP 2010 with the i7, and I'm trying to figure out what to do for external storage and backup since this is my first Mac ever. I have an Icy Dock with a 1TB harddrive in it, but it only has eSATA and USB ports. USB would not be preferable for trying to back up stuff. I was reading these forums about eSATA ExpressCards, but they seem really suspect (kernel panics sound terrifying) and a lot of work to get going. I was thinking about just getting another enclosure with FireWire 800, but can't seem to find any advice on good ones. I was wondering if I should just get a new external harddrive. I would like to get out of this without having to buy too much new stuff. Can somebody give a recommendation regarding whether I should get an expresscard, new enclosure, or new external?
Recently upgrading, I bought the newest MBP 17" specifically because it still had the expresscard slot (thinking having eSATA capability would make it the only pro laptop in the new lineup). I don't need my storage to be portable, I edit at home. Being new to RAID I've been researching and asking questions. I want to get the best setup for my money. People have recommended FW800 but that doesn't help me need to get the most speed possible, I feel eSATA is faster. I also want the redundancy in case a drive crashes. But the MBP only has one expresscard slot.
Does this mean my bandwidth is limited to one 300Mb/s channel? i.e. Should I not even consider RAID0 on a MBP since the bottleneck is 300MB/s? Barefeats recommends this adapter saying it's the fastest they tested at only 200MB/s! So what advantage will stripping give? It seems with only one available eSATA channel the MBP doesn't have many options for professional storage (although still faster than FW800). What would people recommend?..........
Is it possible? I am seeking a solution for my household computing needs. We have a laptop (Mac) and a desktop (Dell). I would like to have one external drive to backup both the laptop and PC and also for storage for both. Is this possible? Would it be a four way partition? The only thing I would ever see a need to cross between partitions would be music from our individual itunes libraries.
I am trying to organize my external storage for a new iMac with an 500G SSD drive. I have a new thunderbolt G-Raid drive and an aging Airport Time Capsule. I was thinking of storing music and pictures, as well as a Time Machine backup of the SSD, and storing a Time Machine backup of my music and pictures on the Time Capsule. Will I need to partition the G-Raid?
Can anyone suggest which would be my best option for external backup? Would a RAID setup be good? I have two exactly the same hard drives laying around collecting dust, and would like to put them to use for an iMac. Could someone recommend a good external enclosure for these two? Which would be better - FireWire or USB2.0? I'm also interested in mirroring since I'd store important data on them, and want both drives to have a copy of each. Is there a disadvantage to that in terms of system's performance?
I'm trying to build a raid 5 USB storage system to connect to an AirPort Extreme router. I am currently looking into buying the following enclosure and adding software to create a raid 5 storage solution which I can connect to the AE for both backup and media storage. Can someone help me find good software to create this raid 5 setup? 4-bay JBOD Enclosure [URL:...]
I am looking for a eSata expresscard for my MacBook Pro. I have a problem with looping my G Drive external through my firewire soundcard due to the single bus on the mbp. It just doesn't like it. What eSata expresscard adaptor would you recommend so i can hook my G Drive upto it?
I'm looking to clone my 250gb HD over to a 1TB Western Digital 2.5 HD. I need to get an external USB harddrive enclosure, but most that I've seen say it has a 500GB capacity. Does anyone know of any cheap external enclosures that can get the job done? If so, can you provide a link?
Does anyone know where/if i can get a 3.5" hard drive enclosure with firewire 800? I'm wanting it for backup for my macbook pro with time machine but i'm struggling to find one on the internet.
I'm looking to clone my 250gb HD over to a 1TB Western Digital 2.5 HD. I need to get an external USB harddrive enclosure, but most that I've seen say it has a 500GB capacity. Does anyone know of any cheap external enclosures that can get the job done? If so, can you provide a link?
im looking for an external enclosure that provides a firewire option for my macbook pro. The reason i am doing this is because my macbook will randomly eject my usb powered one for no reason. I have been reading that firewire does not have this problem. Im only looking for an enclosure as I replaced my stock 320gb hardrive with a 64gb ssd for my main drive. Preferably something in the 30$ range because im a poor college student . Anybody know of a good enclosure to go with?
I just got a new hard drive for my Black macbook 2,1 and no i need a good external hard drive to put my old hard drive. Do you guys have any recommendations, I'd like to get something that has firewire and usb.
Okay so I'm thinking of putting a Intel SSD in my MacBook Pro 13" as soon the next generation is launched thus removing the SuperDrive in order to fit both drives. I haven't used it a lot of times but a few times I do need it and that's why I'm now asking this question.
What external DVD enclosure will work with the MBP SuperDrive if any and how will i eject the DVDs. I'm not going to shell out a 100 bucks plus shipping to Sweden for the MCE Optibay so that's out of question, however cheaper ebay alternative that ships to Sweden with reasonable shipping is okay.
Also while I'm here. I've been thinking about upgrading to 8GB ram kit however a friend of mine told me any ddr3 sodimm ram won't work which sounds weird but to be safe I'm asking if that's true? I'm thinking of buying a Corsair 8GB(2x4GB) 1333MHz kit.
I know the WD 1TB is bigger than the stock HDs in MBPs so was wondering if there was an external hard drive enclosure out there that was cheap and can fit either hard drive? Also what is everyone's thoughts regarding the WD Scorpio Blue 1TB? I bought one before but returned it because of strange sounds but my stock drive makes the same sounds so I guess it was a minor issue.
I'm going to do my first HDD swap with my unibody macbook. I was all set to use Time machine, but I'm hearing that CCCloner or SuperDuper are a better idea. So, could someone link me a good deal on an enclosure I can stick my new drive into? OR, would I be ok just cloning to a partition on my 1TB external WD drive, then installing the fresh HDD, then cloning from external WD to new internal?
I have a mid-2009 13" MacBook Pro that's having a strange problem. It crashed hard last night while I was typing something- just froze solid, couldn't force quit, then the mouse pointer stopped. Shut it down with the power button, started it again, got the "not permitted" symbol (circle with a line through it). Restarted with my Tiger emergency USB boot drive and the hard drive didn't show up in Disk Utility. Whoa! Restarted with a Cmd - Opt - P - R, no change.
I pulled the hard drive and put it in an external enclosure that I have. It mounted just fine on my iMac so I backed up all of my data, then plugged the drive in to the MacBook to see what would happen-and behold the MacBook booted just fine with the drive attached in the external enclosure! It worked perfectly! At this point, I had no drive installed in the MacBook, the MacBook's hard drive was attached via an external USB enclosure, and I booted the machine via the Lion USB rescue utility. I ran Disk Utility thinking that it would have all sorts of errors to report, but the partition showed no problems. I repaired permissions for good measures, then put the drive back in to the MacBook. Again, I got the "not permitted" symbol.
I tried booting from the USB rescue drive- when I went to Disk Utility the drive showed up but the system hanged when I selected it. I restarted with the Snow Leopard DVD inserted but it froze before loading the setup process (I assume when it was trying to mount a file system from the HD).
I run Windows 7 in a Boot Camp config on this machine as well, so just for fun I tried to start from the Windows partition. To my surprise, it booted just fine from Windows. On top of that, once in Windows I had no trouble accessing the Mac partition.
I decided at that point that maybe something had gone awry that I couldn't see and that I should repartition the drive. I put it back in the external enclosure, booted the MacBook from the Snow Leopard DVD, used Disk Utility to repartition the drive, put it BACK in the MacBook and tried to boot from the Snow Leopard disc again- and it crashed in the same place. I rebooted from the Lion rescue drive and tried to use Disk Utility to check the drive- DU crashed when I selected the hard drive.
As a last-ditch effort, I swapped out the RAM and tried again. No go. At this point, I'm really hoping it's a problem with the hard drive, but seeing as though it works great from an external enclosure, I don't know what to think. I don't have any other 2.5" SATA drives to test in the machine so I have to assume that other than a failed SATA controller, firmware, or other logic board problem, it must be the drive, right?
Info: MacBook Pro (13-inch Mid 2009), Mac OS X (10.7.3), 4 GB RAM, 160 GB Hitachi HD
I have the Seagate Backup Plus Drive 2TB. When I go to plug it in and I look at my Storage it says 272 GBs of Other, I know it's all movies and some back ups, So is the a way I can get it to sort my storage like it does with the internal HD ?
My dear baby, a 3 year old macbook pro died last week (way to young). Fried logicboard. Apple wants 1.550 dollars to fix it, so I guess it is gone for good.
My question is, is it possible to take out the harddisk, put it in an external enclosure and plug it in to another mac to get the files?? If so, what enclosure should I buy?It is a summer 2007 macbook pro.
I am new here. I am a linux guy (pour me the hate mails), I don't use a mac. But so it happens, I am now needed to backup files automatically from a Macbook Pro notebook to a NAS device that is attached to the wireless router.The Macbook has some files in it, and a lot of them are constantly updated. The user of the Macbook roams around the building. There is only one NAS device.Can somebody please suggest/recommend a good backup software for this kind of use here?I tried Bonkey. For the life of me, I cannot configure it. It doesn't help.
I currently have windows XP installed by VMware Fusion on an internal hard drive. Is it possible to move the hard drive to an external firewire hard drive enclosure and still be able to run windows XP from my Mac Pro?
I want to clone my hard drive to use on my new one. i dont have an external hd enclosure, though, and would be happy if i didnt have to buy one. i was hoping i could make a clone onto my networked time capsule, then replace the hard drives and somehow boot from the clone from my time capsule.
I'm replacing my 320GB HD from my late '08 MBP with a new Hitachi 500GB unit.
It would be a shame to let the old HD go to waste, so I was wondering what SATA enclosures you guys and girls are using? Preferably something that will connect to my MBP using either Firewire 800 or USB 2.0. There are so many out there, I don't want to buy the wrong one and be disappointed with the quality. Thanks in advance.
I currently have windows XP installed by VMware Fusion on an internal hard drive. Is it possible to move the hard drive to an external firewire hard drive enclosure and still be able to run windows XP from my Mac Pro?
i bought a mini and a external hdd enclosure hopping that i can get my old hd back just for the pics when i when plug it in it doesnt mount to the desktop
I am looking to build my own external RAID setup and have it function as another set of internal ones. Is it possible to buy a computer case and put in a raid card and a power source and just run SATA cables to my mac pro?
When I bought my 13" MBP I swapped out the 160 GB stock HDD with a 320 GB one. The 160GB HDD is just laying around now and I would like to use it as an external storage device.
The subject pretty much says it. Which PCI card to add a External Serial ATA Enclosure to a Dual G5 2.0 GHz? Looking at Sonnet there are PCI and PCI-X SATA/ATA cards.I'm looking to expand my storage and this was a recommendation.
I have just received a Firewire enclosure for a SuperDrive I bought months ago from the same company, Other World Computing. I was told that they would work together, but now that I'm assembling it, I find that the tiny holes on the drive (very near the edge of the drive, and only two on each side of the top, not the many more that the enclosure seems to indicate should be there. In addition, the holes in the drive and the ones in the enclosure don't match up. The enclosure also is very long for the drive, even allowing for room to attach the ribbon cable and other cables inside. I have now spoken with three different people at OWC, and nobody knows why this is or how to work out the problem, except to offer me another, less desirable enclosure that they assure me will fit the drive. (I didn't mention that the drive is an older model and that they no longer carry it.)
Well, I was assured that the one they have already sent me was just fine for my drive, so you can 't blame me for being a bit wary of the assurances for the other enclosure. The drive fits very snugly in the enclosure and doesn't seem to shift around. If I replaced a metal piece around the front of the drive that I took off to make it fit more flush with the front of the enclosure, it would be an even tighter fit. It wouldn't look as nice, but it could be done. My question is I whether I can dispense with putting in those screws, which are meant to secure the drive within the case and keep it from shifting around. (The screws meant to attach the back panel of the enclosure, the one with the internal cables, and the holes in the enclosure will fit together fine, because they are both part of the same thing.)
