Need a new HD External for Time Machine

[gerbilly]

I have a Lacie Porsche 500gb and to be honest it works like a ****ing Lada. It works but turns off during the day for no reason then comes on again, and makes noises like a Lada starting up on a frosty morning.
I have an I Mac with 500gb HD and we have a couple of laptops (1 mac and 1 Dell) and two smaller I Mac's in the home for the kids. In my I tunes folder I have about 160gb of music, movies and TV shoes.
All of my stuff including wii, PS3 and I Phone connect wirelessly to my airport express (older model) and work very well. I have thought about the 1gb time capsule but I cannot go near £300 for this and I do not know if all would work as well with a time capsule anyhoo.
Is there anything else you would recommend that would do a similar job, if not, a reliable quiet HD of about 1tb?

thanks

[gerbilly]

Originally Posted by gerbilly

I have a Lacie Porsche 500gb and to be honest it works like a ****ing Lada. It works but turns off during the day for no reason then comes on again, and makes noises like a Lada starting up on a frosty morning.
I have an I Mac with 500gb HD and we have a couple of laptops (1 mac and 1 Dell) and two smaller I Mac's in the home for the kids. In my I tunes folder I have about 160gb of music, movies and TV shoes.
All of my stuff including wii, PS3 and I Phone connect wirelessly to my airport express (older model) and work very well. I have thought about the 1gb time capsule but I cannot go near £300 for this and I do not know if all would work as well with a time capsule anyhoo.
Is there anything else you would recommend that would do a similar job, if not, a reliable quiet HD of about 1tb?

thanks

bump

any help on this?

[Playalistic]

Get a NAS device. Obviously which one you buy depends on your budget. There are various group-tests of NAS devices in the mac publications and I'm sure some googling would throw up reviews and such. Drobo's are widely regarded as the best NAS devices for the money but they are expensive.

Another consideration is your network speed and topology. For shifting large amounts of data around your network you need to consider which hardware you are using. Preferably N spec wireless operating in the 5Ghz range (which the newest airport express & extreme and the time capsules can run in) but then to support your older devices that only operate at G spec you should isolate into two networks.

The airport extreme base station has a USB port as well that you can use for AirDisk (attach a USB external drive) but I'm not sure on the status with using this for time machine backups, I think there is a bug that stops this but assume this will be fixed shortly.

[gerbilly]

Originally Posted by Playalistic

Get a NAS device. Obviously which one you buy depends on your budget. There are various group-tests of NAS devices in the mac publications and I'm sure some googling would throw up reviews and such. Drobo's are widely regarded as the best NAS devices for the money but they are expensive.

Another consideration is your network speed and topology. For shifting large amounts of data around your network you need to consider which hardware you are using. Preferably N spec wireless operating in the 5Ghz range (which the newest airport express & extreme and the time capsules can run in) but then to support your older devices that only operate at G spec you should isolate into two networks.

The airport extreme base station has a USB port as well that you can use for AirDisk (attach a USB external drive) but I'm not sure on the status with using this for time machine backups, I think there is a bug that stops this but assume this will be fixed shortly.

I have mostly 2 new i macs about a year old, a six month old macbook, and one old white style 17 inch I mac. I know not of what G and N spec are really and would not know how to isolate 2 networks. I think the NAS drives are even more expensive than time capsule, so I think that is a no go.

[Shoka]

I have 2 Western digital 1TB MyBook Studios and think they are fantastic - not the most silent of drives, but I love them. One of these will come in well below your budget. I also have a Western digital Passport Studio edition for when I'm on the move.

Oh they look good too

[SeedyR]

Another vote for Western Digital here.

I have 2 studio ones (both with firewire and daisy chained) and a Passport to go about with on the move.

The styling of them is great, they're quiet, so far very reliable (touch wood) and not too badly priced in my opinion.

If you do a search I'm sure you'll see many recommendations for WD external harddrives on here (I'm sure I'll have chimed in a few times too )

[gerbilly]

Originally Posted by Shoka

I have 2 Western digital 1TB MyBook Studios and think they are fantastic - not the most silent of drives, but I love them. One of these will come in well below your budget. I also have a Western digital Passport Studio edition for when I'm on the move.

Oh they look good too

I have a 320gb passport drive and I must admit it is dinky cute and oh so quiet.
I may look at the 1gb one for Time Machine, and 1 for backing up my i tunes stuff. I would love to free the HD on the i mac, but I have had hassle before moving I tunes library and it took forever having to tell i tunes where everything else was.

[PeterH988]

Just bought this today precisely for Time Machine use.

BUY THE Western Digital 1TB External Hard Drive ONLINE AT PC WORLD.

Everything seems ok, but obviously only a few hours use.

[Idioteque]

I also want to pick up an external back up for time machine, and wondered if there was any advantage to have one thats vertical rather than horizontal? or is it much of muchness.

[Shoka]

Originally Posted by Idioteque

I also want to pick up an external back up for time machine, and wondered if there was any advantage to have one thats vertical rather than horizontal? or is it much of muchness.

It shouldn't really matter, as long as the inner workings of the drive are properly balanced - In essence all a hard drive is is a wheel spinning on a spindle so be it horizontal, vertical, diagonal etc, it should not really make a difference especially with something as undemanding on the drive as taking a backup. Western Digital Book drives which myself and SeedyR have both menioned have the option to be stored vertically or horizontally.

[Idioteque]

Originally Posted by Shoka

It shouldn't really matter, as long as the inner workings of the drive are properly balanced - In essence all a hard drive is is a wheel spinning on a spindle so be it horizontal, vertical, diagonal etc, it should not really make a difference especially with something as undemanding on the drive as taking a backup. Western Digital Book drives which myself and SeedyR have both menioned have the option to be stored vertically or horizontally.

Im looking at passport drives as well? even though it'll be on my desk i like the sleekness of them.

[Idioteque]

I still cant decide on a HD! Everytime i check i seem to read bad reviews. Then whats confused me more is some saying they will work straight out of the box with a mac, and others dont.

Any advice?

[Shoka]

Western digital Studio's certainly will. However its a piece of cake to format them spotlight Disk Utility select Erase and then its as simple as clicking a few buttons. If you get stuck just shout I had the same problem when I first got a Mac and couldn't work out formatting.

The Studio Versions of the Western digital Book's and Passports are the best (IMO) of the Western Digital drives to go for as they have Firewire whereas the others don't.

[baldrick]

The WD drives get a vote from me. My setup is a 320GB iMac with a 500GB MyBook for TimeMachine and a 500GB mirrored (2 x 500GB) MyBook Pro (or something) for my iTunes and Lightroom libraries.

This gives me redundancy on the media/photo data with a fast firewire 800 connection for when I need to access the data and a dedicated TimeMachine drive that can just sit there doing it's thing!

[tomson]

I use 500gb WD mybook drives too - a firewire 800 one for my working files and 2 basic usb ones as back ups. No problems with them apart from the fw800 is a tad noisy.

I also have 2 aging firewire Lacie Porsche ones that are still going strong.