External HDD Recommendations (In general and for Mac Time Machine specifically)

[TGO]

Okay, so I am looking for an external hard drive, mainly to back up the hard drive on our Macbook (which is 250GB). We also have a seldom-used Windows XP laptop with about a 52GB hard drive that I might also like to backup, but it may not be necessary as I have already moved our essential files off of it. I may just wipe it and use it as sort of a netbook.

I will probably use Time Machine for backing up the Mac, so the drive needs to be compatible with that.

I looked at Apple's Time Capsule (combined hard drive and Airport router) but the reviews do not seem great and I am wary of locking myself into more proprietary Apple hardware than I already own (we have the Macbook and iPods because the quality overrode those concerns, but if the reviews for TC aren't great, well...). I do not necessarily need to upgrade my wireless router but would do so if I thought I was replacing it with a really good multifunction device.

Anyway, what drives do people here like? I am thinking about going for 2TB. Does that make sense? Will I have any problems trying to back up both Macs and PCs on a particular drive?

Thanks in advance for your help.

[TGO]

Bueller?

Something-D-O-O economics?

[OrangeJerseys]

I don't have one, but on all my searching of MRoogle (http://mroogle.edesignuk.com/); this (http://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-Desktop-External-WDBAAG0010HCH-NESN/dp/B002KG6HZO/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1267553845&sr=1-3) is what most folks have. AFAIK it's Time Capsule compatible.

[RShack]

If it was me, I'd get either a 1TB or 2TB, depending on how much stuff I imagined I'd be storing. Since the advent of 2TB's, 1TB's are cheap. I'd spend a week or two watching prices online. I'd stick to either WD or Seagate for the HDD's themselves. When Seagate first came out with 2TB HDD's, they had "issues" that evidently have been fixed since. For that reason, I'd be leary of a small outfit who might be shipping old stock. A high-volume place will be long done with that first generation. For a no-name prefab one, you need to google around to find out what brand HDD is inside of it. It's likely to be either WD or Seagate, but I'd find out for sure.

I'd get either a prefab one or a bare drive plus enclosure, depending entirely on what the prices are. Putting a bare drive in an enclosure is NBFD, takes about a minute. Either way, if I later experienced failure, I would remember that it's most likely the USB-thingee in the enclosure and not the HDD itself, so no reason to freak out, just swapping it to a new enclosure will most likely repair things. One enclosure I'm happy with is the Antec MX-1, which I got because it is one of the few that work with DirecTV's HD-TIVO boxes. If you are patient and shop online for them for a while, you can get them for $20-$30, not the $50 you see some places. However, for backup purposes, I have cheap $15 no-name ones that have worked fine so far.

I would also be thoughtful about whether I was gonna use it for one purpose or multiple purposes, and before use would format it into either one volume or multiple ones based on how many purposes I was using it for. I have no news about Mac's or Time Machines.

When shopping, don't forget to include the shipping cost. I've had good luck looking at newegg and seeing which items they have free shipping for. It changes week by week. While I have no brand loyalty to newegg, it's turned out that the last few things I bought, I wound up getting there because they just happened to have the cheapest delivered price of places that I knew were real and not internet rip-off joints.

[srock]

Skip it!

Carbonite. Automatic online backup. You can access all your stuff via the web from any computer. Its cheap.

I haven't used the Time Machine software, but I think the only advantage to using it is the full system restore capability. It keeps track of system state, not just the data.

But that comes at a cost. No geographic redundancy. If some disaster befalls your MacBook, chances are your backup disk will also be damaged as they sit right next to one another.

Backblaze (http://www.backblaze.com/), alternate to Carbonite, is getting good reviews as well.

[RShack]

Carbonite. Automatic online backup. You can access all your stuff via the web from any computer. Its cheap.
If you don't mind having Yet Another Fee to pay forever.



If some disaster befalls your MacBook, chances are your backup disk will also be damaged as they sit right next to one another.
Only if you're talking about earthquakes or house fires, which are not exactly the normal reason why you need backups. For standard scenarios, you just need to plug it in once every X-days briefly. There is no reason to think that presents any risk to both systems. Claiming that the backup system is likely to be damaged because it's nearby is a bit over the top. Online for-profit services are one valid approach, but so is having your own external HDD. It's not like one is smart and the other is dumb.

[srock]

If you don't mind having Yet Another Fee to pay forever.


Only if you're talking about earthquakes or house fires, which are not exactly the normal reason why you need backups. For standard scenarios, you just need to plug it in once every X-days briefly. There is no reason to think that presents any risk to both systems. Claiming that the backup system is likely to be damaged because it's nearby is a bit over the top. Online for-profit services are one valid approach, but so is having your own external HDD. It's not like one is smart and the other is dumb.

Earthquake, fire, flood, theft, electrical disaster, or dog attack. You buy insurance for the hardware, but often the data is more valuable. Why wouldn't you buy insurance for that?

Geographic redundancy is important!

Research, which I choose not to lookup, has shown backups that are not automated are rarely kept up to date. Thus, having to plug it in to your computer is inherently non-automatic.

Also, hard disks are unreliable. At ~$100 for a 300 GB disk that will last, on average, 3 years vs. $50 a year for Carbonite, your only saving $50 in the long haul. Plus you have to deal with one more thing.

An external drive is certainly better then not backing stuff up. And the risk of localized destruction is small, but you have to weight what your are backing up. If you have valuable business data, I have source code, it is totally worth paying for offsite backup. Its like really cheap and easy insurance. If you only have music and pictures, then no, continuous online backup is not necessary. But it easier and almost as cheap.

Also, if you manage multiple machines (I'm up to 5), its easy to keep them all backed up and monitored via Carbonite. An external drive per computer gets unwieldy quickly. You could do a NAS in your house. Tried that. It works, but its expensive and requires more network hardware and decent backup/sync software which tend to be annoying or expensive.

At the end of the day, pick what gets the job done for you. But in my experience, if you require anything more then the bare minimal in backup, Carbonite or a similar service beats local backup hands down.

Carbonite and BackBlaze are both good ones that support Win and Mac. Mozy is more expensive, but they give away small account if you are backing up a few GB's.

[TyCobb]

I won't touch a Seagate. WD is the only way I go (unless we are talking SSD).

This is very important....don't ship the drive. The price you save isn't worth the headache of having a drive fail because the HDD dropped when it was being shipped. If you for some reason have to buy it online, use zipzoomfly.com . They package it the best. newegg.com just wraps it in a boat load of bubble wrap.

Like Rshack said a backup isn't dumb. The more you have the better. It has been 5 years since the last time I tried an off-site data thingy. I found that it took forever to actually upload the data. I am going to assume that improved dramatically so it probably isn't going to be an issue.

For size I would only go 1.5TB. If you fill it then just buy another one.

I would go to a bestbuy and see if they have this drive.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136505&cm_re=western_digital-_-22-136-505-_-Product

I have an older model off that HDD model and it has been fine. I have it unplugged most of the time until maybe once a month were I add some important files I want saved and it goes back to being unplugged. (I am a big on energy conservation like you all should be ;)).

[TGO]

Thanks everyone.

I did think about doing something off-site but my data is not quite that important. I definitely understand and agree with the argument that it is basically a relatively cheap form of insurance, but I don't need it at the moment. If I were doing consulting work or starting a business or something like that I would definitely go that route.

Seems like Western Digital is a pretty good way to go, so I will keep an eye on prices and reviews of specific models.

[BRobinsonfan]

Thanks everyone.

I did think about doing something off-site but my data is not quite that important. I definitely understand and agree with the argument that it is basically a relatively cheap form of insurance, but I don't need it at the moment. If I were doing consulting work or starting a business or something like that I would definitely go that route.

Seems like Western Digital is a pretty good way to go, so I will keep an eye on prices and reviews of specific models.

I went with the 1TB Time Capsule. I read the reviews and had some concerns -which chiefly seem centered around the 18 - 20 month - failure issue. My brother has had one for two and half years and swears by his. I'm gonna be pissed if mine fails before then - but I'm moving into a new office and needed a new WiFi base station anyway - so I thought it was worth the $300 gamble.

I've had very few issues with Apple Products and I've owed them since 1984. I've had real issues twice with laptops that I bought from MacMall that included extra RAM. It seems they use the cheapest, most unreliable RAM on the face of the earth. With the first laptop I had to send it back three times before I got a working unit. The second time, I just sprung for RAM from Apple and installed it myself.

Those two experiences have made me hesitant to buy again from Mac Mall/Mac Warehouse.