MacBook Pro :: What Is The Most Reliable External Hard Drive
Feb 21, 2012
At the beginning of the month I almost lost everything on my computer. So I am now looking for an external hard drive to back everything up. So that never happens again. I'm just scared to get one that is not reliable.
We've been reading a lot about trying to find the fastest 1 TB hard drive, with the Samsungs getting a lot of attention. My question is a little different... Do we have any good data yet on what the most reliable hard drives are? I realize that all will fail at some point, but are some less likely to do so than others? I'm currently trying to set up a RAID storage archive.
Recently I bought 2 identical WD Scorpio Blue 1TB hard drives for my macbook pro 13 inch 2010. My aim is to replace the internal hard drive with one of the two I just purchased and use it as my system drive with Lion, Windows and Data partitions. And for the other hard drive I want to use it as a full disk back up for the internal drive (now 1TB hard drive). After I was done with setting up both windows and mac and data transfer, when I booedt into the recovery partition from the internal drive to clone the drive to the external drive, the disk utility gave me this error (Could not validate source - error 254). I also tried using Carbon Copy Cloner but it only could clone partitions, not the entire drive. Yesterday I downloaded a copy of Clonezilla. It worked fine until it had to clone an exFAT partition (my data partition). The exFAT partition appeared as 'RAW' partition in clonezilla. As a result, the whole partition appeared to be full and clonezilla had to copy every single blocks of data in that partition and the estimated time remaining was about 30 hours. So clonezilla is out too. Just want to ask if there is any program/application (bootable or not) which allows can do a full disk clone to an external hard drive.
Basically I have a 750GB hard drive in my Macbook Pro and over 300GB is taken up with 'BackUp' data. This is more than the total of everything I have on the drive other than that. Time Machine has always been setup on an external drive and when searching all files on the Macbook there is nothing for backup files so don't know where it is coming from.
So around 5 years ago i got the WD-160JB hard disk drive. I want to see all the things i did back then. I want to be able to connect this WD-160JB drive as a external hard drive to my mac.Â
What i am wondering is if you can somehow have a cable or something which links the USB from the MBP to the hard disk.Â
with cloning/copying the content one an external hard drive onto a new external hard drive. Basically, I have a 500GB FW400 drive which I use to store my media files. It's full, so I purchased a 1TB FW800 drive to replace it. Obviously, I thought I could simply copy and paste the media files from the old drive to the new one.I cannot copy the media files to my internal drive first as my internal drive is only 250GB and nearly full itself.I have used Disk Utility to attempt to close the old drive to the new drive, but keep getting "insufficient space" errors.
I've had a lot of problems with my iMac G5 power supply and since I have newer computers I've decided to get rid of this computer.Â
I want to save the hard drive and put it in a case, then use it as an external drive on my other Macs.Â
What sort of case do I need to shop for? Should I look for SATA or what exactly is the proper nomenclature.Â
Is USB 2 the preferred choice, or Firewire, or what? Is there a USB 3? I use a mid-2010 27 inch iMac with the intel processor, and I needed to buy an adapter to use my older Firewire external drive. Is Firewire a dodo?Â
i have a power mac g-5 quad with an external dvd drive and a external hard drive and 2gb of ram. on my ext. hard drive i downloaded mac the ripper and that is where i put all my dvds, now today on my pmac i was using mac the ripper, popcorn, itunes, safari all at once and it froze up on me?why? could the ram be an issue? how may programs can i use at once with my pmac?
i just got the new WD5000BEVT 3.0 Gb/s in order to replace my old HD but found out that my previous one has 1.5 Gb/s interface. i'm wondering if the new HD can be replace. if it can't fit, i plan to use it as an external hard drive but have no idea what kind of drive enclosure i should looking for.
have both Macbook and a Dell laptop, both of which I download things on. Is it possible to have an external hard drive that I can hook both notebooks up to and put data on? (Doesn't have to be at the same time) If so, what are my best options? I just want to be able to hook either of my notebooks up to one single external hard drive, but still have it accessible by both computers when I want. Thoughts? (Sorry if it doesn't make much sense, kind of hard for me to explain)
I have a Western Digital 250gb Scorpio drive in my Rocstor external hard drive, currently used by Time Machine. Is it possible to remove the drive from the case, and put it in my 'Book? Could I go out and buy a 1tb hard drive, and put it in the case? What would be my best way of coping data if the Time Machine backup is on the now internal hard drive? I have other a bunch of movies and T.V. shows on the drive, as well.
I have a 1-TB LaCie hard drive attached to my Macbook (119 GB hard drive; see more specs below).
I'd like to add another hard drive to back up the one I have (which is also backed-up by my Time Capsule). I do a lot of work with large video files. My previous LaCie's have conked out. What do you think is the best make and model for a 1 TB drive?
my start up disk on my macbook pro is almost full and I'm considering getting an external hard drive to backup my computer and/or separate my files, such as having school work and other applications on one hard drive and my many photos, videos, and films on another one. Is this wise? If not, what should I do?
I am looking to upgrade from OS 10.4.11 to a newer system, but first need to purchase an external hard drive to back everything up before updating. The options for an external hard drive that will run on an OS before 10.6 seem to be limited. Does anyone have suggestions of a reliable external hard drive for 10.4.11( any brand)?
I recently formatted my 250gb hard drive to MS-DOS (FAT32) so I can use the drive with Mac and PC. When I came to plug in my external hard drive in the other day with another mac PC it said I could only read only under get info.Â
Do external hard drives work with MacBooks first of all? If so, do they need specific specs to work? If not, when you plug them in wil they work straight away or do they need to be formatted? If so, how would I format it to work with a MacBook? If I was to take it out of the mac and put it into an ordinary PC i.e. Windows, will I have to format it again to work with that PC?
Looking for opinions or comparisons on performance between an internal mac hard drive vs an external firewire 800 hard drive or better. Is the performance on an internal MP drive or iMac internal drive much faster than connecting to a firewire 800 drive? I'm sure it depends on the drive, I'm wondering about apple factory installed internal drive vs say a WD external firewire 800
is there anyway I can use my OS X 10.4 dvd from my macbook to install on my external hard drive and then run it on an older mac? if so how can I do this?
i have a 320gb external hard drive and was wondering if i could partition it so i could use it just as an external hard drive on one partition, but have time machine on the other partition. i just recently got my frist mac, which is a macbook, and i love it.
I've got an external hard drive. It's a "My BooK" Western Digital 500 Gb that uses both USB and Firewire. I've used it many times successfully with my MacBook but today, my Macbook will not recognize it.
I need to partition an external hard drive because time machine requires its own partition. How would i go about this without deleting the entire drive and doing it that way?
i was just wondering. i just ordered theHITACHI H3640US 640GB 7200 RPM 8MB Cache USB 2.0 Silver External Hard Drive. Is it Compatible with Macs or MacBookPros?