Which External Hard Drive should I buy/Do you suggest?

The G-Tech drives are great...I just purchased a 1TB G-Tech GRaid2 drive (has a fan). They use Hitachi drives which are made very well. Maxtor's Onetouch external drives are very reliable as well, but like mac57 said...the G-Tech drives look great next to the aluminum cased Apple laptops. The G-Tech G Drive Q ( http://g-technology.com/Products/G-DRIVEQ.cfm ) is fanless and has 4 types of connections...FW400, FW800, USB 2.0 and eSATA.
You can purchase an eSATA ExpressCard/34 for the MBP's ExpressCard/34 slot, this connection is faster than FW800. Good Luck!

Thanks everyone. I just purchased the Lacie drive, I should have it sometime next week.

2Big too

drgrafix said:

You can certainly search... but just for the record... I'm liking this Lacie 1TB external that I bought. It fits your budget, has double the space you asked about, and has USB 2.0, Firewire 400 and 800, and if you are doing heavy duty work the FW 800 is usually the way to go. I can't speak to how well it'll work in two different OS's, but perhaps someone else can.

This drive comes set up for the mac, so it's ready to go the minute you connect and apply power. I don't know about posting links to vendors here, so if you want to know where you can get it for under $275.00 then PM me. But you can simply do a search in Google and you should get good answers too.

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Hello, I just bought my 1TB Lacie 2Big from the Apple store, and it came setup with HMS+ for the Mac. I read the manual and had to go with Firewire 400, because my iMac is a couple yrs old, but it was plenty fast for me. I didn't realize I got way too much for my iMac, but, I'll use it now for my Tax & other stuff, and later on modify. So far so good
btw, what store did you buy yours from that it came setup ready for the Mac?
Thanks,
Robert

Macbook Pro: Need small (250GB+) drive for storing video

I've recently purchased a MacBook Pro (latest gen) and have realized that my hard drive (250GB) is no match for the amount of video I have. I want to get a small sized external firewire 400 or 800 drive that I can plug in and sit next to me when I'm editing the videos.

Does anyone have any recommendations?

Look into the Western Digital Mybook Studio. I bought one recently and it's been great so far. It has Firewire 400 and 800, USB 2.0, and ESATA. 750GB 7200RPM drive, and I picked it up for $259 on sale at best buy. The 500GB is $199.

I've also owned a Lacie 160GB USB 2.0 drive for a few years without a single hookup. It works great with OSX...the drive sleeps when not in use. The WD Mybook does this as well.

Another option is picking up an internal HD and getting an enclosure for it. This will usually be the cheapest option, and you can tailor things to your needs.

If you're going to just be storing video, FW400 is better than USB 2.0 for transfers. FW800 is obviously much faster. In terms of drive speed, i'd highly recommend a 7200RPM drive over a 5400RPM if you're going to be doing any kind of video editing (not just backup on it). Especially with a lot of HDD camcorders using the AVCHD codec, it's a plus to have a quicker drive. I've been using my WD drive with FCE 4.0 editing AVCHD and using the FW400 connection on my MB, it's been fine.

The only downside to the WD drive i've noticed is that it takes like 10 seconds or so to spin up after it's been idle for a while. My Lacie is faster. I also have a 200GB WD drive in an external USB2.0 enclosure that I put together, and that spins up faster as well. The WD does perform better though, and at 750GB, it's much larger.

Hope that helps

-Nick

The WD My Book Studio looks pretty nice and portable. Thanks!

Hi everyone. I am trying to find a reliable fast and reasonably priced external hd to use with my MacBook Pro. I would like to have one with a firewire 800 connection. One of the ones that I have been considering is the 500GB OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro 'Quad Interface.' Does anyone know if this is a good one, or have any other recommendations that would be better?

Also, how hard is it to completely get rid of all the backup software and stuff that comes installed on most external HDs?

MacGal said:

Hi everyone. I am trying to find a reliable fast and reasonably priced external hd to use with my MacBook Pro. I would like to have one with a firewire 800 connection. One of the ones that I have been considering is the 500GB OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro 'Quad Interface.' Does anyone know if this is a good one, or have any other recommendations that would be better?

Also, how hard is it to completely get rid of all the backup software and stuff that comes installed on most external HDs?

Click to expand...

I've heard really good things about the Mercury Elite. OWC usually doesn't put out bad products, and this one in particular seems to be popular.

As far as getting rid of backup software on the drive itself, it's as easy as a quick format.

DispatchJack said:

Thanks everyone. I just purchased the Lacie drive, I should have it sometime next week.

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I was just about to post - Get a Lacie they're great then read that you had! Good choice, I have the DUAL drive external RAID version. Its a corker

I like my My Book 500GB with firewire. not even a sneeze of a problem

Recommended 100GB External USB HardDrive?

Hi all

I have recently returned from a trip to Uganda, Africa with an estimated 100GB of DV footage I am hoping to edit in Final Cut. However, I am using a MacBook with only 20GB of free space, so I'm going to need something bigger.


Are their any recommended 100GB USB HardDrives that are compatible with MacBook's?

Is it possible to edit the footage in Final Cut directly from the USB HardDrive, without transferring it over to my MacBook, and will Final Cut loose all my files if the USB HardDrive is disconnected then reconnected later?

And lastly, do I have to take into consideration the speed of the USB drive?


Oh and by the way my budget is low ....around £200 or £300....I might be able to got a little higher.....


Thanks a lot for your help!

Zacariem

Best thing to do would be to get a Firewire hard drive as it is the best way to be able to edit the video on the external drive. It offers the speed and bandwidth you need for video editing, especially when it comes crunch time.

Are you looking for a drive that will sit on your desk and have an AC adapter or do you need something very portable? Benefit to the former is that it will be much faster than the latter.

First I would recommend firewire connection. Second I would get as much capacity as you can on your budget. You can always use more storage space. The sweet spot for capacity/value lately has been 500GB, at least for USB connected drives. Firewire may be different, but I doubt it. Check out www.newegg.com. They consistently have the best prices.

@ Kash
If firewire is faster it would help a lot! The only thing is that I import my footage from my camera using the firewire port, and their is only one port on my MacBook. Is their any way you know of round that?
And no, it doesn't need to be portable.

@ fleurya
Thanks for the web address, I'll have a look in a minute!

If you need to use the Firewire port for the camera, then USB isn't really that bad. I currently use Firewire for importing video and have it go directly to a 500GB external drive connected via USB. I edit the videos directly on the external drive without a problem.

Firewire would be ideal, but USB is pretty good too.

ok I'll probably go for USB then.

I'm on Newegg.com now, just scrutinizing the prices to try and get the best deal - I'm like that!

Thanks for all your help, I've really appreciated it! I'll post an update on here once I've decided on the right drive...



Zacariem

this is what I'm looking at at the moment:
SimpleTech 750GB Hard Drive

the only problem is I'm not sure whether it's Mac OS compatible?
I want to be certain before I go ahead and get it....

sorry my mistake. it says on Newegg.com that it is Mac compatible...

All external drives are Mac compatible as they tend to come pre-formatted as FAT32 or not formatted at all, in which case you can format it to whatever you want, preferably HFS+

right i've bought one! It's a 500GB Maxtor OneTouch 4 and it works well so far! I've just put all my music and video on it now....

thanks again for all your help.