External Hard Drive for my MBP

Hey guys, i want to purchase a external hard drive for my macbook pro that i just purchased. But i do want it to be something like a "Western Digital My Passport" Series (as in a 2.5" or smaller so that it is very portable). I am also interested in getting it with a Firewire 800 port - which is where the problem i am having on finding what i want.

Anyone suggest a product or anything??

Thanks

borb

 

hi

I would recommend getting the passport studio. It has a capacity indicator, fw800, a metal casing and even comes with a carrying case. Macmall had the 400gb version on sale for 99 bucks. I know it was still in stock yesterday so you may want to check it out.

 

I would recommend building your own external hard drive with a nice Seagate. From what I've heard, companies put in the junkiest drives into external's with the hope that they will be more seldom used than, say, a computer hard drive. I don't know if this is true or not, but I don't want to lose my data and I'm not taking any chances.

Take a look on TigerDirect or NCIX and see what you can configure a drive for. I built the external with no experience and it was dead simple!

Also take a look at Paragon NTFS in order to read and write to Windows partitions if you ever need to. It's a godsend.

 

Whoa, so the Segate Free Agent Go and the Western Digital Passort Essensial can be used in both Windows and Mac ?
Could I divide the external hard-drive into 2 partions ? 1 would be the NTFS format and the other is Mac Format ? Is it possible ?

 

Technically I'm sure it's possible, but I wouldn't recommend it. May cause much grief. I suggest you format the external using NTFS so that it can be read by both Windows and Mac. If you format it HFS (the Mac format) you will only be able to read and write with your Mac and not be able to use the external with your PC. Also make sure not to format as FAT32 as it is uncompatible with over 32GB (or thereabouts).

 

this isn't entirely true. you can format the drive to be FAT32, but single file sizes will be limited to 4gb. also, you can get macdrive for windows if you want to format your drive as the mac-native HFS. i have it, works just fine and im able to read/write the mac drive on my windows pc.

 

Technically you can make a FAT32 partition any size, but it's not recommended. The 4GB per file is correct though, not exactly sure where I pulled the 32GB from, maybe something do do with formatting from an older OS or something. And good catch regarding HFS on a PC, didn't realize that.

 

i DON'T recommend the wd passport series.

build quality is poor. lots of creaking noise with the housing. looks and feel like cheap plastic and it shows.

other manufacturers at least has the decencies to strengthen these plastic casing with hard coating for additional protection. not the case for passport, which is easily scratch, especially the sliding door for the hd capacity led indicator.

on my 1 year old passport studio, the rubber foot is now dark brown. i am not referring to the foot surface, but the INSIDE of the rubber foot. hard to imagine these were transparent when new.

all in all, except for the price, it feel cheap. and it is cheap.

 

I use this for portability:
http://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?pid=10949

 

Just did some further checking on Lacie's site and they have some smaller sized Rugged drives in their Clearance section - 250GB w/ Firewire 400 and 800 for $105. Amazon.com also has the drive for $96

 

It's ugly in comparison to the Free Agent Go with various colors :X