Newbie question on external drives

After 55 years and about six different p.c's I have finally made the switch to an iMac and I must say I am pretty impressed. I have a 27 inch 2.7Ghz with 12 GB of ram and a 1TB hard drive. The main reason that I finally made the switch is that I would like to convert my old family videos from VHS and Sony digital 8mm to dvd. I have also purchased the Elgato video capture device for the VHS transfer as it seems to be pretty highly regarded for its ease of use and performance. I am now in the process of trying to determine what type of external hard drive would serve me well for backup.The two models that I have been looking at are both Western Digital drives one is a 2Tb My Book Essential at 119.99 and the other is a 3Tb My Book Essential for 139.99 (WDBAAG002OHCH-NESN, WDBAAG0030HCH-NESN). I would think that I would be better off with the 3Tb but I am unsure about these drives connections usb 2.0 versus other models which have usb and firewire capability.I have searched the forums and I realize brands of drives are like brands of cars. I just need some basic help to determine if these will work or reasoning on why I should consider others. Thanks, Jim

Rudyjr said:

After 55 years and about six different p.c's I have finally made the switch to an iMac and I must say I am pretty impressed.

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You've been using personal computers since 1957 (2012 - 55 years)?? That's a long time...considering the first mass produced personal computers weren't produced until the late 1970's/early 1980's!

- Nick

p.s. Maybe you're 55 years old...but that's not the way your post reads.

p.p.s. Great to hear you're enjoying your Mac experience!!!

Any drive that has a standard USB interface (which is to say, ALL usb drives) will work just fine. I have a half dozen Western Digital My Books between one Mac or the others and all have worked without failure. Also a few Seagates.

Go for price and the size you want. Or you can get a single or dual USB disk adapter and plug in standard bare SATA drives as you need them, just like inserting memory cards. I do that also. Interestingly enough, bare drives aren't much cheaper, if at all, than a full desktop USB package.

My one complaint about the My Book Essential, as opposed to the original My Book, is that it puts unwanted and unremovable Icons on my clean desktop. Possibly that has changed in the year or so since my last one - there were a lot of complaints being posted about that.

If some windows machine needs to see the drive on occasion, stay with some sort of FAT filesystem. Otherwise, go into utilities and format it to the OSX filesystem.

pigoo3 said:

...considering the first mass produced personal computers weren't produced until the late 1970's/early 1980's!

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Actually, it started in April 1975 (or 76, maybe - my memory is not as good as it was). Several friends and I put together our just received Altair kits. And believe me, those five computers qualified as slave labor mass production for weeks on end. Kits were incomplete, nothing worked, documentation was - well, better I don't comment on that.

Fun though.

cptkrf said:

Actually, it started in April 1975 (or 76, maybe - my memory is not as good as it was). Several friends and I put together our just received Altair kits. And believe me, those five computers qualified as slave labor mass production for weeks on end. Kits were incomplete, nothing worked, documentation was - well, better I don't comment on that.

Fun though.

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I wasn't exactly considering home built computer kits to be in the same category as the "off the shelf" ready to run personal computers that became available in the late 1970's/early 1980's.

Regardless of when personal computers first became available (mid-970's or late 70's)...my main point was...the OP didn't start using personal computers in 1957...because they simply weren't available then (that's the way the OP's post reads).

- Nick

Nope guys have not been using p.c's for 55yrs.Just an old (55 yrs) dog trying to learn a new trick. First p.c. wasn't in our house until my two girls came along almost 30 years ago. I still remember dropping over 1k for a cd, sound card upgrade for our second one because Arthurs Teacher Trouble had come out on cd rom and I wanted the girls to be able to use a computer.

cptkrf said:

My one complaint about the My Book Essential, as opposed to the original My Book, is that it puts unwanted and unremovable Icons on my clean desktop. Possibly that has changed in the year or so since my last one - there were a lot of complaints being posted about that.

If some windows machine needs to see the drive on occasion, stay with some sort of FAT filesystem. Otherwise, go into utilities and format it to the OSX filesystem.

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I wonder where I get more information regarding the issue you mention with the icons?

On the OP topic (Yeah, I know, we hate to get back to that when it's so much fun chasing rabbits!) one factor to consider is that USB2 speeds are slower than Firewire. Normally, bigger is better, so 3Tb is better than 2TB, but if you are moving a LOT of data, you might consider the faster firewire speeds, Firewire does add cost to the unit, but still should at least be a consideration. Personally, I've shifted to all firewire drives here.

On old computers, I started in the 70's on kits also. My first "store bought" computer was a TRS-80, model 1, with 16kb of memory and a tape recorder interface to store programs on cassettes. Later I added an external memory box about a foot square that added a massive 48kb of memory and let me daisy chain two floppy drives (5.25 inch, I think they stored 128kB on each drive). Wow! 64kb of memory was HUGE!

I have been doing a similar capture project using a dedicated card rather than the device mentioned, I wonder if the USB drive would be too slow. I have not captured to a USB drive since my Mac Pro can use SATA but I used a slower drive (5400 rpm) once by accident and the audio and video got out of sync over time. In sync at the beginning to a second or more by the end of the tape. When I went back to the faster drive (7200 rpm) the problem went away on the next capture.

MacInWin said:

On the OP topic (Yeah, I know, we hate to get back to that when it's so much fun chasing rabbits!) one factor to consider is that USB2 speeds are slower than Firewire. Normally, bigger is better, so 3Tb is better than 2TB, but if you are moving a LOT of data, you might consider the faster firewire speeds, Firewire does add cost to the unit, but still should at least be a consideration. Personally, I've shifted to all firewire drives here.

On old computers, I started in the 70's on kits also. My first "store bought" computer was a TRS-80, model 1, with 16kb of memory and a tape recorder interface to store programs on cassettes. Later I added an external memory box about a foot square that added a massive 48kb of memory and let me daisy chain two floppy drives (5.25 inch, I think they stored 128kB on each drive). Wow! 64kb of memory was HUGE!

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I was also looking at the Seagate Goflex desktop STCB3000101 that has the USB and Firewire at around 159.00 for 3Tb.