External hard drive advice?

Hi @AuditoryHaven it’s simple. Pick up any Seagate, and Mac has software built in you can use to reformat it to work on your Mac.

Don’t buy a drive that has the “Mac compatible” sticker on it at places like best buy, b/c truly, there is no difference other than it has something extra like a firewire port, and they charge you a 100 dollar premium for it.

Look at how extremely easy it is! Good luck.

This is another way to do it, and the way I think I did it. . . but I don’t remember.

I use a few of these. Once you plug it in you open Disk Utility and make it look like this and then hit erase to format it for OS X.

Depends on the Mac. Most MacBooks can use any external HD’s as long as it’s new or you don’t want the stuff on it (Mac and PC use different formats, the HD will have to be formatted for Mac). mrrich is right in a 50/50 kind of way, a HD that says “Mac Compatible” are just as compatible as the others. You don’t need a special HD, just one that’s dedicated to your Mac.

Oh Yeah, I personally like WD (Western Digital). Even though Seagate HD have survived 16 month deployments with me, I like the work ethic of WD.

The Western Digital Passport drives are among the best and most reliable available. You can get one specifically for your Mac, or get a generic one with NTFS so that you can easily copy files from any OS to any other.

Buy two cheaper hard drives instead of the most reliable hard drive. The odds of two cheaper hard drives failing is a lot less than the most reliable hard drive failing.

That’s true ^ but doing so means you’ll have to discipline yourself to keep both drives in sync by copying one to the other every few days. How long does it take to copy a TB of data from one external drive to another through USB???

means you’ll have to discipline yourself to keep both drives in sync by copying one to the other every few days. How long does it take to copy a TB of data from one external drive to another through USB???

There are tons of software that do this automatically. I use Second Copy. Also, most users wouldn’t need to routinely move one terabyte – data backups can be done incrementally – only the data files that change or are new need to be backed up. And, even if a user did require that much data, they could let it run at night or something like that.

I would go with LACIE. Made in USA, firewire of all sorts and I’m sure they’ll be able to use Thunderbolt soon. Nothing is wrong with the mentioned above and I think all external HD’s are standard USB 3.0 So that’s good. But, I have a hard time trusting HD’s from other companies as the exteriors are made of plastic. You get super strong reliability with Lacie. I’m currently working on stacking these on top of each other horizontally. Check it out

It’s not my photo but what I’m working towards. Only external HD do I recommend Lacie. My internal for my MacBookPro is actually SeaGated up. :) Most memory comes with really good warranty and the place where you bought it typically allows for exchanges in any bugged goods. May I ask where will you purchase this? FRYS Electronics tends to have good deals. Avoid BestBuy unless it’s all you’ve got.

Cloud?

Tifa?

Cloud?

Free?

OP didn’t say anything about free? Also, partly free with purchase of iPad or iPhone upgrade.

Thank you all very much for your responses. You’ve saved me both money and time :)