Suggestion for an external drive to house photos and videos instead of on my MacBook?

I am piling up a ton of photos, videos, music on my MacBook Pro. Wouldn't it make sense to move this stuff to an external drive (delete from the Mac), at least the photos and videos, and access them from the external drive? Or does this make no sense?

Yes it does make a lot of sense. Now as to which Ext HDD to do it with, its like flipping a coin mate. They are 6 of 1 half a dozen of the other in performance these days, but im a Western Digital type of guy. They are 99% plug and play with a Mac OS, which means no re-formatting them.
If you just want it for storage, and not to carry around, i would look at the WD MyBook collections, ranging from 750GB for the portables up to 8Tb for Desktop arrangements. They are a good brand and have done a lot in the last 4-5 yrs to welcome in the growing Mac community

External Desktop Hard Drives for Mac Overview

HTH and if you still have questions, be sure to ask.

Cheers

I tried Seagate, but you have to do the formatting. Pain. With the WD, is there a way to store the photos/videos so that when opened it mimics the look of iPhoto with all the date info, albums, etc.? When I move photos to the Seagate, it dates them all with the date I moved them.

Yes by cloning the iPhoto Library to the Ext HDD.

Thank you. Will try cloning

+1 for the WD MyBooks. I have two of them and they work well with my MBP.

If you want to carry one around, I've had good luck with a LaCie portable. Seems rugged enough to survive being banged about in a briefcase and backpack.

You will need to format any drive let alone a Seagate. It is standard for them to come NTFS and you require Mac PS Extended (Journaled) in all probability. Takes about five sends. Hook up the drive, go top Disk utility, select the external, hit Erase and format.

You CAN get OSX formatted drives, but almost 100% do come for Windows. I think LaCie formats for OSX, and some vendors have WD OSX drives, but not many. But formatting is dead easy, as Harry said.

+2 on the WD My Book. Using one for Time Machine. Also like the GTech's with Firewire, no external power needed and the have the same look with the aluminum housing.

TattooedMac said:

Yes it does make a lot of sense. Now as to which Ext HDD to do it with, its like flipping a coin mate. ...............

Click to expand...

I agree. WD is currently best in quality and reliability.

Now something to consider is a Networked Attached Storage or NAS for short. I have a Buffalo 2TB Link Station that I keep my files on. This model had WD blue drive in it.

Also if you want something more Apple, there is their Time Capsule that are both NAS and has a built in wireless router. Not sure on the drive inside the TC though, Apple doesnt make spinner drives..

arundel said:

I tried Seagate, but you have to do the formatting. Pain. With the WD, is there a way to store the photos/videos so that when opened it mimics the look of iPhoto with all the date info, albums, etc.? When I move photos to the Seagate, it dates them all with the date I moved them.

Click to expand...

I woudlnt say its a pain. Just plug up the drive, go to Disk Utility, click Format and choose Apple JFS. Easy simple and quick.

I buy OEM drives, non of them ever come formatted. Now in windows, this is a pain in the rear from time to time with windows lack of software..

I have a mix of drives at home and in my bag.

WD 2 TB hanging off my APExtreme for my MBP Time Machine
WD 4 TB NAS hanging off the APExtreme for my video and photo libraries (not iTunes)
WD 1 TB plugged into my MacMini for Time Machine
Seagate 4 TB Plugged into my MacMini for iTunes library (2 TB full now)
Seagate 1 TB Portable Wifi drive with all my movies for streaming to iPad.
Toshiba 500 GB portable as a temp storage.

These are just the ones currently in use. I have a few other 500GB drives lying around.

Exodist had his fingers one key over, it's HFS.

Unless he was referring to Journaled...

Deckyon said:

Unless he was referring to Journaled...

Click to expand...

I was

Proper name is Mac OSX Extended. But its a JFS. Not sure why I called it Apple though.. LOL

JFS is a Linux file system. OSX is not Linux. Technically, Apple calls it "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)" and they call it Hierarchical File System or HFS.

JFS at Wikipedia

HFS at Wikipedia

Actually, JFS is an AIX Unix file system most folks quit using with AIX 5.3 and 6.1. Linux can run on JFS2, but not JFS. Here's an example of an AIX box I'm working on right now with both JFS and JFS2 file systems on its datavg volume group...

root@en1nims1 /# lsvg -l datavg
datavg:
LV NAME TYPE LPs PPs PVs LV STATE MOUNT POINT
fslv01 jfs2 64 64 1 open/syncd /images
loglv00 jfslog 1 1 1 open/syncd N/A
loglv04 jfs2log 1 1 1 open/syncd N/A
fslv00 jfs2 20 20 1 open/syncd /imgdev
docfs_lv jfs 70 70 1 open/syncd /docfs
esilv jfs2 8 16 2 open/syncd /ESI
smhelp jfs2 39 39 1 open/syncd /SMHelp
smhelpehp1 jfs 256 256 2 open/syncd /SMHelp1.ehp1
root@en1nims1 /# oslevel -s
5300-05-CSP

MacInWin said:

JFS is a Linux file system. OSX is not Linux. Technically, Apple calls it "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)" and they call it Hierarchical File System or HFS.

JFS at Wikipedia

HFS at Wikipedia

Click to expand...

Please re read my post, I didnt say OSX Ext was JFS. I stated "a" JFS. It is "a" Journaling Files System. Not JFS or JFS2 or Reiser or EXT,1,2,3. Simply "a" JFS.

The small details can change the whole meaning of a sentence..

But I am more then familiar with GNU/Linux as I have been using it since I was introduced to Slack7 in 1999. ;-)

Exodist said:

I woudlnt say its a pain. Just plug up the drive, go to Disk Utility, click Format and choose Apple JFS. Easy simple and quick.

CLIP...

Click to expand...

That was the post I was referring to when I looked up JFS and HFS. I did see the "a" in the second post, but wasn't sure the OP would note the difference. When you go to Disk Utility in OSX it doesn't call it HFS+ or JFS in either case.

Got into Linux in 1999, eh? I helped beta test version 0.2 about 1992, as I recall. I may still have a copy somewhere in my archives. ;D Also ran Slack, Debian and a couple of other variants in the mid 90s. Professionally supported AIX and HP-UX as well as RedHat and Fedora in this century. Never expected Linux to be as big as it is, to be honest. Had a consultant I hired away from AT&T who had worked on the original Unix. Now that man was scary in what he knew about the inside of *ix! He came with a 7" reel of 1/2" tape that had just about every can-opener known to mankind on it.