backup devices for Mac & PC

Awaiting delivery of iMac any day now and have been biting nails concerned over backups. Can't really afford the Timeline backup HD Apple sells after spending all that money for an iMac. Spoke to friend who has a WD 'MyBookLive' 1T he'll give me for $75. I need something I can backup both my new iMac and PC laptops. This looks like it is the answer. Has anyone had success or headaches with this device.

It is going to depend on how big the hard drives are in the Mac and Windows machines.

My own personal recommendation and one I follow is get a drive that is twice as large as the one you are backing up. I cannot answer as to how your Windows machine will back up, but for Time Machine, you have the first initial backup, then you have incremental backups as things change. When the drive is full, it starts deleting the oldest incremental backups as needed.

Having needed to recover over 132 albums in iTunes last week, I can attest at the ease and reliability (if you have a quality drive) of Time Machine and that it allows you to restore to any location, not just the original one.

I use a 1TB Western Digital drive for my MBP. It is hooked up to my AirPort Extreme. It has been flawless since it went live. I just bought another Mac (Mac Mini) to be a media server with a 500GB drive in it and I have a 1TB drive that will plug directly into the Mini. I have been happy with Time Machine.

Time Machine (Apple's built-in backup utility) is great! I've used it several times to not only restore a file that was accidentally deleted, but to recover entire systems after upgrading a hard drive or replacing an old Mac. I highly recommend it.

Like Deckyon, I recommend using the biggest hard drive you can for the back up. At the very least, make sure it's the same size as what's in your computer. If you can, try to find one that's a little bigger for extra piece of mind.