Help with external hard drives for my iMac.

screemer · 11-01-2009, 9:57 AM

i have a growing number of music, films and pics on my iMac. i want an external HDD both to put them on and to back them up to. Am i best going for the time capsule with wireless access etc or just a firewire drive like a WD one? i want to be able to stili access the content on my Apple tv when i get it.

wicker_man · 11-01-2009, 4:21 PM

If you want a firewire drive, I'd reccomend Western Digital My Book range. I currently have two 1TB Studio drives (quad interface), and used to have 500GB and 750GB Pro drives which have all been fine.

If you are going to be using the drive for multiple computers or want to access the drive wirelessly at all times (for example with a laptop), then a Time Capsule would be better (and you would get constant Time Machine backups when connected to your wireless network. Alternately, you could get an Airport Extreme base station and connect a large hard drive (or more via a hub) to use as a wireless drive.

I'm not sure about content access to an Apple TV, but I believe as long as the content is in your iTunes library on a computer, then it can sync/stream to it. You can have content from an external drive in iTunes (change your iTunes music folder directory,) I have my music collection running from one of my WD My Book drives in iTunes.

BabyBel · 11-01-2009, 4:35 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by screemer

i want an external HDD both to put them on and to back them up to.

Just to clarify something- do you want two external drives for storage and for back-up or one drive with originals and back-ups?

If it's the latter then one thing to bear in mind is if the drive in the unit fails you've got an 'all your eggs in one basket' scenario and you've lost everything. Something to bear in mind

wicker_man · 11-01-2009, 4:41 PM

That's a good point, and the reason why I have two 1TB drives. I have my important data copied onto both drives, and then one drive has DVD rips (which are replacable by re-ripping) and less important stuff, and the other drive has EyeTV recordings and other files which aren't that important.

This covers me if one drive fails, but if both fail then I have my most important stuff (uni work and photos) on an 80GB drive at home (currently at uni).

BabyBel · 11-01-2009, 4:54 PM

Always best to have spares.

I've got my music, iPod vids and pictures on my iMac, my iMovie stuff on one external drive and everything backed up on a second external using Time Machine. That way I'd have to have three hard drives fail on me to lose everything (touches wood)

*A n d r e w* · 11-01-2009, 6:31 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BabyBel

I'd have to have three hard drives fail on me to lose everything

Or a robbery or fire or flood or other disaster, natural or otherwise.

Dave Bartram · 11-01-2009, 6:57 PM

Exactly why I keep my backups off site...For photo's mainly (both HDD and DVD's also)

BabyBel · 11-01-2009, 7:05 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by A n d r e w

Or a robbery or fire or flood or other disaster, natural or otherwise.

I've got an Apple branded baseball iBat for robbery protection and if of the others happen then the least of my problems is losing my iPod Touch videos

K86 · 12-01-2009, 10:36 AM

I spent a while trying to find a good external HDD and this was the best I could find:

Western Digital My Book Studio Edition 1TB Firewire 400: Amazon.co.uk: Electronics & Photo

I was thinking of a Time Capsule also but I found them a little too expensive for what they were and the wireless feature I wouldn't use anyway so it seemed like a waste

The WD is 1TB, has Firewire 400, 800 and USB 2 connections with cables included
Another feature that I found attractive was that it turns itself off when not in use

Hope this helps

gilford · 12-01-2009, 10:45 AM

I got one of the 1TB MyBook Studio last week and as good as it looks it has its problems

My iMac will only recognise it via USB, it will NOT see it via firewire 800 at all even after various firmware updates downloaded from the WD site!

I am led to beleive it is an OSX 10.5 issue and not the Mybook's so hopefully with future updates firewire is possible because at the end of the day tha is why I bought it!

I had a black standard 500gb Mybook before this and it failed after just 3 months so I dont really have much faith in them so I have another iOmega drive doing the same job, just incase

achoudry · 12-01-2009, 12:04 PM

check out the lacie drives...they work a treat.

i have one of the porsche design ones from a while back. it's only 250gb but went through a first backup with it last week. backed up just under 200gb of data in around 2hr 30mins (via firewire). pretty impressive.

shadieb · 12-01-2009, 12:30 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by gilford

I got one of the 1TB MyBook Studio last week and as good as it looks it has its problems

My iMac will only recognise it via USB, it will NOT see it via firewire 800 at all even after various firmware updates downloaded from the WD site!

I am led to beleive it is an OSX 10.5 issue and not the Mybook's so hopefully with future updates firewire is possible because at the end of the day tha is why I bought it!

I'm using a 1TB Mybook with my iMac through Firewire 800 and it is working a treat on Mac OSX 10.5.6

Maybe your Mybook has a faulty firewire controller or a bad cable? Have you tried it on a different machine?

gilford · 12-01-2009, 1:01 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by shadieb

I'm using a 1TB Mybook with my iMac through Firewire 800 and it is working a treat on Mac OSX 10.5.6

Maybe your Mybook has a faulty firewire controller or a bad cable? Have you tried it on a different machine?

It is a known fault with them mate, I can get it to see it sometimes, but it is very hit and miss so I dont bother with it.

I noticed a software update when I was having my breakfast this morning so I will try that later on but to be fair, the USB is quick enough after the initial 200gb back up

baldrick · 12-01-2009, 1:16 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by shadieb

I'm using a 1TB Mybook with my iMac through Firewire 800 and it is working a treat on Mac OSX 10.5.6

Maybe your Mybook has a faulty firewire controller or a bad cable? Have you tried it on a different machine?

My iMac running 10.5.6 works perfectly with various FW400 and 800 drives inc. WD My Books....

gilford · 12-01-2009, 1:20 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by baldrick

My iMac running 10.5.6 works perfectly with various FW400 and 800 drives inc. WD My Books....

Like I have said, it is a known problem, with various people having the issue but SOME are ok. If it is firewire the OP is after, I am just letting him know that there may be other better options for him.

A simple google search will reveal all the problems with it

baldrick · 12-01-2009, 1:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by screemer

i have a growing number of music, films and pics on my iMac. i want an external HDD both to put them on and to back them up to. Am i best going for the time capsule with wireless access etc or just a firewire drive like a WD one? i want to be able to stili access the content on my Apple tv when i get it.

Is there a definitive answer about 'off-line' support for ATV?

For Screemer - The ATV is an extension of iTunes with the ability to store info locally to save running your Mac 24/7. If all your iTunes content is on an external HDD you can either sync iTunes and store upto the capacity of your ATV (40GB or 160GB) locally, or you can stream it from the external drive via iTunes. I don't think you can stream direct from the external drive to the ATV. (Does that make sense?)

As for other comment re. storage v. backup, if you put you entire iTunes library on an external drive and it fails you will lose it all. Personally I use a Wester Digital dual disk enclosure running as a 500GB mirror, so that's one box containing 2 x 500GB drives but my iMac only sees 1 x 500GB. When my iMac writes to the drive, the drive automatically puts the info onto both drives. This way if 1 drive fails the data is protected.

richard plumb · 12-01-2009, 1:53 PM

which one? I like that idea - i want backups of my media but without the aggro of manually setting it all up. The day you forget to back up is the day it fails.

You can stream direct from an external drive providing a Mac is still the source. eg I have an external usb drive attached to my time capsule with my media on. My itunes library on my MBP points to it. I can stream that from my appleTV, but my MBP has to be on as the 'host' itunes library.

you can stream directly-directly (i.e. no faffing about) if you have boxee/XBMC installed and use SMB (or a directly attached USB drive)

With boxee installed you can also ftp content directly to the appleTV hard drive and play it locally without needing to have synced it from itunes. So that could be used as a backup solution - have one copy on the appleTV and one on a separate hard drive. If you have a vanilla appleTV with content on, and your original media drive fails, I don't think you can pull the content off the appleTV.

baldrick · 12-01-2009, 4:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by richard plumb

which one? I like that idea - i want backups of my media but without the aggro of manually setting it all up. The day you forget to back up is the day it fails.

I use the WD My Book Studio Dual Drive and run it as a RAID 1 mirror. Alternatively WD now make a 'My Book Mirror Edition' which is a USB only version.

The good thing with these drives is that the RAID manager is built into the drive. An alternative would be to get 2 USB/FW drives and create a RAID 1 volume via OS X. You would see a single drive in Finder eg. 'Media Store' but when you moved anything onto this volume OS X would automatically write the data onto both drives....

richard plumb · 12-01-2009, 6:01 PM

I like that second idea too - especially as I have a couple of 750GB maxtor USB drives sitting not doing a great deal. Is software raid reliable enough on OSX do you know? and does it alert you to drive failures?

baldrick · 12-01-2009, 6:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by richard plumb

I like that second idea too - especially as I have a couple of 750GB maxtor USB drives sitting not doing a great deal. Is software raid reliable enough on OSX do you know? and does it alert you to drive failures?

I used it for a while. I bought a dual disk enclosure that could either be run as a hardware RAID 0 or set to mount as two 500GB drives. I did the latter and soft RAIDed them as a 500GB mirror and it worked fine.

I don't know off the top of my head about drive failures etc... I guess you could configure it and before you start using it power down one of the drives and see what happens!?!?