Need recomendations, Small External Hard Drive

Hello everyone-

I'm looking for information and recomendations for a small external hard drive. I'm a Mac & PC user but it would be primarily for my Mac.

The minimum requirements would be 60 gigs (preferably 80 or 100) and I would like it to connect using both USB & Firewire. I would also like to be able to boot my Mac from it.

I've seen decent full size drives, but I want a smaller drive.

Brands? Price ranges? Experiences? any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,
GregR

As far as I know there is no such thing as a decent external hard drive. You can't run disk diagnostics on them, you can't read the S.M.A.R.T. data from them, you can't even read their temperature. If someone knows something I don't, please let me know.

If you want to do any of the above, you need to remove the drive and connect it via the ATA (IDE) port.


I've never seen a 2.5 inch drive greater than 40 G.B.

If you get a 3.5 incher, make sure it has a fan, or it will overheat. A power switch would be nice also.

I have a Maxtor 5000dv with USB and firewire and a 3.5 inch drive. When I bought it there was no fan. It got so hot it was only useful for frying eggs. I cut a hole in the top of the case and mounted a small fan. So far it's working. When I get tired of the fan blowing dust into it, I just reach around the back and yank out the power cable. Real convenient way to power off, isn't it?

If you are only using it to move data from one computer to another, the inability to run diagnostics isn't important, I suppose.

Let me clarify my intended uses and perhapes I can get some more comments.

The primary use of this drive to back up a hard drive. Secondarily to exchange files between machines in different locations and lastly to boot up a dead machine and completely restore all files in the event of a complete internal hard drive failure.

GregR

If you want to boot from it it will have to be formatted in Mac format (Name escapes me at this second). If you want to easily trade between PC & Mac it will need to be Fat32. Like most things, the Mac will read the Mac and PC format, but the PC will only read the PC format.

You can partition it and put boot information on the HFS+ partition (That's the name!) and then leave the rest Fat32.

If you are going to run backups from your Mac you want it to be HFS, as you'll find things named for HFS on your Macs drive, that won't copy over to the external drive.


All that said, the best way to get a small external drive is build your own! Find an enclosure you like on the internet and then order a drive to go with it. If you want small better stick to 2.5" drives, which can be powered (Assuming you purchase the right enclosure) from the computer without requiring an external power supply.

Here it is > http://eshop.macsales.com/Catalog_Item.cfm?ID=5879&Item=OWCMOFWU60GB72
I have the 250GB Mercury Elite Pro 7200RPM FireWire 800+USB 2.0/1.1 Oxford922 that's a 3.5" and a much better deal in the long haul- use it for Final Cut Pro work
http://eshop.macsales.com/AddToBasket.cfm?ID=5738&Item=OWCME8FW7250GBJ

Thanks Saaby & Aten_Imago

That's what I was looking for. Yes I would partition the drive and make one bootable. My older Macs I added external drives to all of them, but they were in big cases and SCSI.

GregR

You Mac guys are making me feel bad. Would one of you explain to B. Gates how to boot from an external drive? Maybe someday I'll be able to do it with my Pee Cee.

[ QUOTE ]
eluminator said:
You Mac guys are making me feel bad. Would one of you explain to B. Gates how to boot from an external drive? Maybe someday I'll be able to do it with my Pee Cee.

[/ QUOTE ]

You mean PC's right now can't? even since Win 95?

Mac's have always had in the OS, instructions to search all drives in a specific order to find the "system folder" which contained the OS. Of course you could specify the prefered drive on a control panel. But if it could not be located due to corrupt or missing files the OS had a specific order to look for the bootable OS. This is a memory stretch from way back in 1991 for me, but I believe the order in which it looked was first to the internal floppy drive, then external floppy, internal HD, external HD, CD Rom drive or something close to that. Until it located the "System Folder" that was bootable.

I would imagine now days it just looks for the OS on internal/external HD's and CD-rom drive.

Back in 1994 I had an Apple supplied bootable CD-Rom with sftw to fix corrupt files on the HD or to remove viruses etc. etc.

Just another example of what I always felt were the advantages of a Mac and why they were more expensive.


GregR

Booting from an external hdd is a function of the BIOS not the OS, you just need to check the bios setup of your system board. I've found the best way to have an external drive is to buy an external case and a hdd and put the drive in the case, for some reason they charge a lot more $ for someone to put the drive in the case for you. For example I bought a less than $20 USB 2.0 2.5" case and stuck in the 20G from my laptop when I put a 60G in it.

I'll second a recommendation for Other World (Macsales). I have a 120GB Mercury external FW/USB drive and it's fine. You really pay a premium for the 2.5 inch drive form factor, and they are limited to 60GB (80 is apparently available now or soon). The 3.5 inch series is really not that big, much smaller than the SCSI types we used on old Macs, and you'll have to go there if you need more than 60GB. My (older) Mercury has no fan and I've never had a problem with it for a year. I have it partitioned and use Carbon Copy Cloner to make a fully bootable backup of my Powerbook's entire drive every week or so.

In fact on a Mac you can hold keys at boot and boot:
From internal drive (Any of them, pick which one you want to at boot using a GUI)
From external Firewire drive
From another Mac's internal drive
Over a network
From a CD

eluminator
I'm on B Gates' hit list because I tried too hard to explain to him and his followers that he was the wrong leader. Microsoft profits hugely from having the inferior OS ...since millions of hours are spent ( wasted) and millions of jobs kept chasing imperfections ;-) Just switch to Mac and be happier. Don't you deserve it ? /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/buttrock.gif /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif

The older 5400 rpm drives generate less heat than 7200 drives. They can be installed in places that a 7200 can't be installed, without additional cooling.

Aten_Imago, the Mac vs. PC thing could fill a book. I'll only say that the NT OS is pretty good. For some things, like the particular software I work on, NT with it's support for "events", is superior to anything I've seen.
XP is NT, with a small dose of Win9x thrown in.

I don't care about B. Gates, but it's not his fault that millions of people bought those stupid IBM PC's complete with DOS or Win 3.1, or whatever. I never had one. When I bought a PC with Win9x, I reformatted and installed NT.

NT isn't a Microsoft invention anyway. Microsoft hired Dave Cutler from DEC to write it. They tell me it looks a whole lot like DEC's VMS.

I always liked the Motorola CPU better than the bass-ackwards little-endian Intel with it's bizarre instruction set. But Intel won the battle.

[ QUOTE ]
eluminator:
The older 5400 rpm drives generate less heat than 7200 drives.

[/ QUOTE ]

Some of the new 7200 rpm drives are now COOLER than the older 5400 rpm drives. Check out the Western Digital Special Edition drives with 8Mb cache. They are also quieter than the old 5400s.

The one I run externally is on all night when I use it and heat has not been an issue, even without a fan. They are also dirt cheap.

Thanks for the tip Sub_Umbra. I have Seagate, Maxtor and Hitachi. I haven't used a WD in many years. Not because they are inferior, but how many drives can a fellow use? /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

When I looked at the WD website they seemed to be pushing the 10000 rpm ones. Without investigating further, I knew I didn't want a screaming flame-throwing piece of hardware inside my computer. Next time I'll do some more research.

By the way, of the three brands I am familiar with, the current Maxtor is the quietest. I don't know about reliability though, and I guess nobody else does either. The Hitachi is quiet enough and has a 3 year warranty, not that that means much.