[jax]

i've come to the realization that i should get a external drive so i can backup/clone my current system in the event something was to ever go afoul. just looking far any advice/suggestions.
checking out the apple store this looked like it might be what i needed. also, do the drives usually come with the cable to connect it, or must they be purchased separately?
thanks!

[SueG]

Just tell us what drive you are looking at, we cannot follow a link deep inside the Apple Store, it's associated with a cookie set for your machine. It will time out for you, too.
I like FireWire drives, and have had the best luck with LaCie.

[Kazoo]

I agree with Sue, go with a firewire drive, or even a firewire/usb2 combo drive.
There are a lot of good drives out, shop around and find yourself a deal. Lacie is good, Macsales (OWC) drives are good, just about any of the name brand drive makers will serve you well too. I have a western digital firewire/usb2 drive that I am quite happy with. The only complaint that I have with it is that it doesn't have an on-off switch, that might be handy sometimes.

[gyroscope4]

something to keep in mind: if you have a tower, you can probably install an extra internal drive. internal drives are cheaper. but with an external drive, you could keep a backup in a different location, which would be better protection from loss of data due to fire or theft or what have you.
i have a lacie firewire drive that is very nice and has served me well for one year. any new drive should certainly come with all the necessary cables. oh, and a feature i would look for is an extra firewire port on the back of the drive, so that you could daisy chain another device to it. you may not have another firewire device yet, but someday you might want one.

[RichL]

I agree with Firewire.
However, I buy my drives here at OWC .
I find their drives to be very capable, affordably priced and I love having the ability to use USB OR Firewire. It allows me to hook it up to different Macs that don't have Firewire, like an older iMac we have, or a PC (ugh) laptop they give me at work.
Take a look..

RichL

[ilovetrains]

I use a Fantom Drives 120 GB firewire. I picked over LaCie when purchased due to price, but really like LaCie more. Now they are about the same. I knew I would upgrade in the next 6-12 months purchased, and it worked great with my G#, only a little slow. It is a champ with the new G5. I can put it in a bag and take to relatives house and hook up to show my 60 GB plus file of family pics.

[albloom]

Jax, I'm using LaCie d2 120gb FW drives -- yes plural. I keep
two generations of backup. From J&R Music via Amazon.com for
$160 + $10 shipping. Comes with all cables. Pre-formatted.
Comes with a CD containing a variety of utilities I don't use.
Its a very nice small footprint (2" by 6" or so) unit that is plug
and play. On-light/power-button on the front. I keep the most
recent hooked up and mostly off. Power-up and it mounts on the
desktop automagically.

[d00d]

I agree with Rich. OWC is a great place to get external drives. I personally just bought a case from them and bought my own 200GB drive separately from somewhere else on the cheap. If you shop smart, you can save a lot.

[RichL]

In reply to:

---

I personally just bought a case from them

---

I was considering a case and drive myself.
I was wondering how hard it is to pop the drives in and out of the case?
Was considering an archive type plan where I could buy bare drives, put my stuff on them and then pull them out of the case and stick another drive in there.
Do you think that is possible??
RichL

[d00d]

It's not that hard, but if you're going to be doing something like that, with lots of swapping, a full case isn't necessary. WiebeTech makes a dock thing that you just stick on the end of a hard drive, which would be great for your uses.

[carolcarol]

Hi,
I hope someone has good suggestions for me. I am looking for an external hard drive
that I can back up, but one that in its back up can also be bootable (since this is for work). FYI, my computer has both System 9.2.2 and OS 10.2.5 on it.
I have read about the CMS ABS Plus, but understand that in incremental backups, it does NOT delete files from the backup that have been deleted or renamed or moved on the source disk. Is there any system that would solve this problem?
I am looking for an external hard drive that can be bootable (for emeregencies), but would also solve the above listed problem. Is the following one way to solve it? I would also want to be able to partition it, and manually drag files over that I might want deleted from my computer, but extra copies elswhere.
I am most concerned about not having to spend a lot of hours getting an operating system up and running again in an emergency, and would use a backup system to resolve this more quickly.
Please help.
Carol

[gyroscope4]

what i would do is get any firewire drive that is bigger than your internal drive, then partition it such that one of the partitions is exactly the same size as your internal drive. then use the free program carbon copy cloner to make a bootable backup of your internal drive on the partition of the same size, and use the spare partition for extra storage.
again, you don't need an external drive with special backup features. just a regular old firewire drive, and carbon copy cloner, and you'll be all set.

[SueG]

If your computers have AGP graphics native, they can be booted from a firewire drive. (The PCI graphics machines - the first G4 tower, the Blue & White and earlier cannot boot from a firewire drive). The other question relates to backup software, look at Carbon Copy Cloner.

[carolcarol]

Thank you for the information.
I just remember why I was considering this CMS hard drive-it has a 3 year
warranty for the hardware, whereas all other firewire drives, like those from La Cie have only a 1 year warranty. Do you have an idea of what the reality on firewire drives life time is? Please let me know