Can anyone recommend an external hard drive for backing up my MacBook?

Did you see the announcements that came out of Macworld today? You ought to consider Apple’s newly announced Time Capsule.

I have this external hard drive. It’s $80 and works quite well. As for Time Capsule, I’m pretty sure you have to own a MacBook Air for that to be viable.

I hate Seagate brand hard drives. I’ve had nothing but problems with their external and internal models.

Just to clarify, Time Capsule works with any mac running Mac OS Leopard.

-R

I like Western Digital’s 1TB MyBook but the new Time Capsule is pretty spiffy.

@boydieshere: any Mac with wireless networking and Leopard can use it.

@robhaya: the querent said s/he wanted to use Time Machine, so I think availability of Leopard is a foregone conclusion.

Wow, indeed Time Capsule is rockin’ but $499 (or even $299) is a little rich for my blood…

Thanks for the suggestions, everyone.

You have to evaluate the Time Capsule on the basis of what it is: an external 500GB drive (sells for $125—$175 locally) or a 1TB drive ($300—$400 locally), combined with a 802.11n access point and router(sells for $100 or so locally) and a wireless print server (which will push up the price of that access point by $50—$100).

Reasonable value for the money, but a lot of gear for a high price at the same time.

Time Capsule uses a “server grade” HDD connected over Serial ATA AFAIK, which probably makes for better performance and reliability than a regular HDD over USB. That’s just from what little I know so far though.

I have a white MacBook. I decided on the white 250GB Western Digital Passport. It is the same color and finish as the MacBook, and the beauty is that the white model only costs $140, as compared to the black one which costs $200. Best Buy is selling out of their current stock of the white models and is replacing them with the more expensive alternate colors. I would recommend trying to find one of the white ones at your local Best Buy store before they disappear.

Do not go with Maxtor. Lot’s of QC problems. Seagates are generally okay.

I use a western digital mybook studio, 500 GB for 200 bucks off amazon, on a macbook with time machine. no problems at all.

One of the best features is that it sleeps and turns on and off automatically with the computer. Also it’s not too loud and it looks quite nice.