External hard drives

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Tonight I was about ready to go buy a Western Digital MyBook Studio external harddrive for my macbook. They're the ones made specifically for macs.

I know you can get ones that aren't specifically for macs for a lot cheaper. But I really like the idea that it automatically syncs whenever you save anything. I mean, what's the point of spending money on an external harddrive if I have to manually sync it? Then if I'm in the middle of an important project, and don't have time to sync it if I'm in a hurry or something (or if I forget) then all that important information that I had just added could be lost.

Here's what I thought about tonight that made me not get the HD yet-
If anything were to happen to my mac and it didn't get fixed right away, I would need to get my files onto my mom's PC. Would there be any way for me to get those files from that hard drive onto a PC if my hard drive was mac-specific?

Or if I got an external hard drive that works with macs and PCs, then would it still not be easy to transfer my info onto a PC since it'd be formatted for mac?

If worst came to worst I could always hook the hard drive up to a friend's computer and just burn CDs of the most important stuff. That'd just be kinda annoying...

I just wanted to see what kind of hard drive I'd need to get my files onto a PC, because if anything really bad ever happened to my mac, the other computer at my house is a PC...
 
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What version of OS X are you running? If you're running Leopard, then I would suggest getting a normal external drive and using the Time Machine function. It will backup everything automatically for you, and if your computer ever dies, you can restore it with the Time Machine backup.

If you're still on Tiger, then you can still get the normal external drive and get yourself a program called SuperDuper. It essentially creates full backup images of your hard drive, which are infinitely useful when you need to restore your computer.
 
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I'm still on Tiger.
But if I get a normal external hard drive can I use that backup image on a PC later on????

That was my question, is what to do if my other computer that I would be using if anything happened to my mac is a PC?
 
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In that case all you need a regular external hard drive and backup software that automatically backs up files and folders rather than doing a full system backup.

One good piece of software to take a look at would be Memeo's AutoBackup. You can set which folders you want backed up and to what location (you can backup to multiple locations at once, such as a physically connected external drive, a network drive, and online storage) and it'll backup your files automatically, no manual input required.
 
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Here's the thing though, I also wanna do a full system backup because I have two more years of my macbook warranty so my laptop would get fixed eventually...
Ya know, maybe I should just make CDs of the files that I would absolutely %100 need right away in case anything happened to my computer. Like- my school files. Now that I think about it- SO many of my files wouldn't transfer onto my PC anyway.

UGH this is so annoying. I hate having to make CDs because you can't just update them, you have to keep burning new ones. And would a flash drive transfer over from my mac to my PC?
 
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You can do both. Get the backup software that backs up the files automatically so that you can access them with a PC and get SuperDuper to do the hard drive images that you can restore from in case the Mac's hard drive dies.

Flash drives would work just fine, just be sure it's formatted as FAT32.
 
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It depends on the format of the drive. If you need to share the data on the drive with Windows at any point in the future, you should buy a normal drive and format it to FAT32. However this will be slower with OS X, won't support indexing and won't support time machine on Leopard. FAT32 is the most compatible HDD format though.
 
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Zoolook, Time Machine isn't an option for him as he's still running Tiger.
 

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