Need a new external hard drive to back up my macbook pro, and store pics / movies etc.

What’s good these days? LaCie kit seems to get great write ups.

I suppose a Time Capsule is too much?

Rachel

http://www.techradar.com/news/portable-devices/other-devices/kingston-debuts-1-terabyte-usb-3-0-flash-drive-with-matching-price-tag-1124153

WD my book live. It’s a nas connect it to your network for access by any device on your network. You can even access via mobile networks too.

Rachel, I was tempted by the time capsule but £250 for 2tb just seems extraordinary even to this dedicated apple fanboi.

Captjon if I had $3400 spare to spend on a USB drive I’d have some lackey to do all this dull stuff for me….

WD my book – I have one and am very happy with it

bigG – yes, tbh it’s a lot more than a network drive and if the extra features are no use then no need to spend that much.

I wouldn’t be without mine, though, really immensely useful.

Rachel

Rachel

WD my book live. It’s a nas connect it to your network for access by any device on your network. You can even access via mobile networks too.

Also have a WD My Book, not overly impressed, it’s still working but the user interface is now U/S (not uncommon if you Google it) and it doesn’t half make some nasty noises. Can’t say I’ve got a lot of faith in it long term.

I use a WD Passport for mac using time machine

Expect to see 1Tb flash drives drop down to affordable levels in a year, eighteen months. When 64Gb SDXC cards were announced around eighteen months or so ago they were £750, you can get one for £38 now, and a 64Gb flash drive for £22. SDXC is supposedly scalable to 2Tb…

I got a Western Digital Elements 2TB for $110 delivered a couple of weeks ago. It ate up all of the files on a couple of smaller external HDs.

I don’t know if it is better or worse than any other HD. It is a little black box that sits there with a blinking blue light…

Bufflao Link Station
either 2Tb on RAID 0 or 1TB on RAID 1

Quick swap – 2 drive, 2 bay Network Attached Storage
• Supports RAID levels, 0, 1 and Standard
• Active Directory Support: Works as a client in an Active Directory domain allowing the LinkStation™ Duo to utilise the domain users and groups.
• WebAccess – allows you to store, share and access files from any web browser via PC, Mac or iPhone
• In-Built DLNA/UPnP CERTIFED™ media server – for easy playback of multi-media files to any DLNA certified device
• Schedule backups to a USB storage device or another Buffalo Network Attached Storage device.
• In-Built BitTorrent™ Client
• Supports Apple® Time Machine Back-up with multiple clients
• Supports Apple® Bonjour®
• Integrates with iTunes®
• Auto Power ON/OFF with your PC or MAC
• Eco Friendly scheduled Power Saving Mode
• One touch transfer of media files from digital camera/camcorder with Direct Copy feature
• Easy to install and set-up
• 10/100/1000 Gigabit Ethernet port
• 1 USB port
• Supports UPS connectivity via USB port
• Supported OS: Windows7 (32/64bit), Windows® Vista™, Windows® XP, Windows® 2000, Windows MCE 2005/2004, Windows Server 2008/2003, MAC OS X 10.3.9 or later
• 2 Year Warranty

Little noisy to have in the living room but more designed to be left in the cupboard under the stairs.

TBH, if you’re looking for “an external drive” rather than some sort of NAS solution, they’re much of a muchness these days. If I were getting one, I’d be looking for the best storage-to-price ratio that wasn’t made out of cheese. Though if your MBP supports USB3, that’s probably worth paying a small premium for.

Randomly, this fits the bill and is competitively priced. Though for £100 you could net a 3Tb unit.

either 2Tb on RAID 0 or 1TB on RAID 1

You’d almost certainly be better off with JBOD than RAID0. RAID0 is all the benefits of ‘just disks’ but with double the chance of failure. Friends don’t let friends use RAID0.

Friends don’t let friends use RAID0.

Very true I wouldn’t use it for backup but I probably would consider it for storage.

I may be misunderstanding you, but I’d say the opposite was true. Doesn’t really matter if your backup dies (ie, no data loss), so long as your primary store doesn’t die as well.

I generally consider (and use my backup as the last safe copy of things – ie should be most reliable and recoverable)

For day to day stuff having a large reasonably quick network store if fine, if it dies then i have back ups, if I screw up I have backups. I have a TV/Music/Film/Photos store that I would be happy to have on RAID 0 with a back up (being the true sense) elsewhere. For local storage I’m happy with more space and less redundancy. For backup I’d have more redundancy and less space.

Also what I choose to backup safely is stuff that cannot/very hard to replace not the entire content of my PC’s.

You only need your backup if your ‘in use’ storage fails. That being the case, I’d want it to be more, not less, reliable.

RAID0 for speed of use.

Individual disks in my office drawer at work for backup.

Remember you don’t need a fast (hot running noisy less reliable power hungry) HDD.

Even on my Gigabit Ethernet NAS, a 5,400rpm drive is not the bottleneck.

I need a HDD for exactly the same reason but since the IT experts have weighed in I feel more confused than ever!

I use a WD My Passport Itb.It’s really small, Runs off USB, USB3 compatible(I think)and has auto backup. Once you set it to backup it scans every time it’s connected & updates any altered files. if you delete a file from the WD it still leaves it on the PC though. You need to do a couple of alterations to find out how the backup works.
Got Mine for £60 from PC world when it was on offer.

In conclusion, I’ve just ordered a 2TB WD My Book Live. I’ll let you know how it works out for me but it seems to do what I want.

+1 for WD my book live. The apps for Android/Apple are really good, you can sync lots of data to you device easily.

LaCie Rugged Mini USB 3.0/ USB 2.0 1TB Hard Disk Drive

Works excellent with a Mac and is tiny… Also have the older version which is much bigger.. touch wood never had a problem with them like others in the past!! 🙂

So what’s this RAID stuff then? Why is it bad? Is it bad? What’s the alternative? I’ve never heard of a NAS until tonight, seems like a good idea though, the drive on my laptop is full to bursting with pictures of the kids from the last 2 years. Would be good to free up a bit of space and get a bit more organised. The buffalo link station 1 t’bay seems the cheapest at the mo, does that mean its made from cheese?

NAS Network attatched Storage
So rather then use a USB and move the thing round you plug it into your router and it appears as a network share, access for everyone on the network including smart TV’s, SONOS, etc
RAID Comes in a few flavours
RAID 0 is discs linked together (2x1TB Drive = 2TB)
RAID 1 is 2x1TB = 1TB with the info mirrored over the 2 drives (one fails the it can be replaced and info inteact)
above that your into a bigger array where the info is shared across multiple drives for more redandancy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID
As before on here it’s value as a backup is dependent on a few things.
If the box fails not the drives then recovery may be harder.
It’s not a proper backup if it’s in the same room/house as the info – fire/theft

If it’s photos, have a look at google drive and picassa web albums for cloud based storage.

Cheers!