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Post by NebraskaVBfan93 on Oct 28, 2011 23:00:15 GMT -5
I would like some advice regarding my need to buy an external hard drive for my Mac. I realized this need when my hard drive crashed a couple months ago. Not having anything backed up, I was worried I had lost everything I had on there, most notably the thousands of photographs.
So what I think I am wanted is something mostly for the photographs as they would be the one thing I would not be able to replace. If it would also hold other information all the better. If it's not already evident, I have a pretty elementary education regarding computers so as Denzel Washington said in "Philadelphia" talk to me like I am a six year old.
FYI-From the little I've read, it seems like the LaCie brand is one of the better options. Yes? No?
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Post by mikegarrison on Oct 29, 2011 2:29:18 GMT -5
If you really want security, you could pay a few bucks a month for some off-site backup. Then even if your house burns down, or somebody steals all your computer stuff or something like that, you can still recover your data because it will be on a server somewhere else. www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2288745,00.asp#fbid=cS94LAbFd6C
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Post by NebraskaVBfan93 on Oct 29, 2011 2:38:58 GMT -5
Thanks Mike. I've heard some good things about a site called TIME MACHINE along those lines. I thought I would use that in addition to an external hd.
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Post by BearClause on Oct 29, 2011 12:05:08 GMT -5
Desktop or laptop? Some Macs are notoriously difficult to remove hard drives in case you need to upgrade or recover from a crash.
There are some services like Carbonite. The biggest problem with those services is what happens when you have to recover. Incremental file updates (i.e. just added/modified files) might not take too long, but in case of a crash, how long is it going to take to download hundreds of gigabytes of data?
Personally I think a bus-powered external hard drive would be a good investment. I used to use a hard drive that required an power adapter, but it got a little crazy with all those wires. These things are so cheap today. If you need to recover, it will only take a few hours. If you want something really fast and know how to install a hard drive, you might try something like a bare drive in a USB or FireWire enclosure. You'd use it like an external drive, but in case of a crash you could pull out your crashed drive and install it in a notebook computer. A properly "cloned" drive will start up immediately. Many of the small external drives use SATA 2.5" drives that you could theoretically pull out and install in a notebook computer. I've heard of some people who have tried that, but some of the larger capacity ones are too thick for that. You'd have to break open the case and hope you don't damage the drive, as well as finding one that is the right thickness.
As for brands, there really isn't anything that special about brands these days. LaCie doesn't actually make hard drives. They design enclosures and sell complete setups where they've installed a hard drive from any number of manufacturers. I had a LaCie d2 drive crash on me. The internal drive was from Maxtor. I ended up taking it apart. I've also got other LaCie drives. Personally you could go to Best Buy and any of the brands should work well with a Mac. You would simply need to reformat, which is quick.
I use Carbon Copy Cloner myself. It's donation ware from a guy in Maryland. I have a cloned hard drive set as a boot volume. I can boot externally, which is useful for a quick and dirty recovery or if I want to do a "repair" on my internal drive.
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Post by NebraskaVBfan93 on Oct 29, 2011 12:37:02 GMT -5
Thanks BC. It's a desk top. BTW-You must know some pretty bright six year olds.
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Post by BearClause on Oct 29, 2011 14:07:17 GMT -5
Thanks BC. It's a desk top. BTW-You must know some pretty bright six year olds. Yeah - it gets rather complicated. So specifically, do you know what machine? Macs run the gamut from machines where I'd think anyone who could operate a screwdriver could figure out how to swap out a drive, to ones where the steps involve almost a hundred little operations and specialized tools. I remember seeing instructions for removing the drive from any white iBook, and thinking to myself that there was no way I could do it myself. Some of the older Mac Mini machines had a case that snapped into place, so taking it apart literally meant prying apart plastic tabs that had the potential to break. My 2007 MacBook is one where I could take out the hard drive and replace it in five minutes. It's 7 screws and three of them are "captive" on a piece of metal and won't fall to the floor. If you're not all that technically inclined, I'd say to start off with a simple external hard drive. I rather like the small USB hard drives, even with a desktop. The advantage is that you probably won't need to have a another cable or another power plug. You should get one that matches or exceeds the capacity of your current drive. I was thinking maybe something like this one (I actually have this particular one): www.bestbuy.com/site/Toshiba+-+Canvio+3.0+500GB+External+USB+3.0+Portable+Hard+Drive+-+Black/White/1758088.p?id=1218292495616&skuId=1758088&st=external%20hard%20drive&cp=1&lp=6You might want a different one depending on your capacity needs, aesthetics, price, etc. Once you get a drive, follow the instructions to plug it into a FireWire or USB port, and do the following: 1) Format it using Disk Utility. You can access it under Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility. On the left you would click on the icon for the new drive. Mine says 500.11 GB Toshiba External USB 3.0. Click on the bar where it says "PARTITION". There's a drop down menu for "Volume Scheme", where "1 Partition" should be selected unless you want your drive divided into smaller "logical" drives on the same drive. Give it a name like "Drive Backup" or whatever you want. For format, you need Mac OS Extended (Journaled). Size should be automatic with one partition. Near the bottom there's a button that says "Options". Click on that and select "GUID Partition Table" (I'm assuming it's a recent Mac with an Intel processor). That allows you to boot up from the external drive in case of emergency, by holding down the option key when starting up and selecting the external drive. You start the format/partition process by clicking on apply and waiting for it to complete. 2) Then you need some cloning software. You can actually do this with Disk Utility (it' called "Restore"), but there may be problems. There are some excellent cloning tools, including Carbon Copy Cloner (I use it) from Bombich Software and Super Duper from Shirt Pocket Software. I like CCC because it's donation ware and you get a fully functional version whether or not you pay. One could pay anything for CCC - I think I sent in a $10 check a few years ago. www.bombich.com/ccc_features.htmlwww.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.html3) I'll describe using Carbon Copy Cloner. You would select your source from a drop down menu on the left, which should be your boot hard drive. Then you select the destination from a drop down menu on the right, which should be your external drive name. Once selected, it will give you options to "Maintain a Backup" with either archiving or not. Archiving in this case just means that it won't delete files from the destination drive that were deleted in the source drive since the last backup, and it will back up files that were modified. I select "no archiving" because I usually delete files I don't want any more, and to get an exact replica of the drive. Then click on the "Clone" button, click on Continue, and enter your system password when it comes up. The first time you do this might take a while, but any subsequent backups don't take as long since it primarily copies over files that are new or modified since the last time you performed a clone. There are also ways to schedule regular backups, although I haven't tried it. There are a bunch of ways you could do this, but you wanted it spelled out simply. If you're really not that inclined to take apart the machine yourself, you could just take your backup to a shop that could replace a crashed drive for you. They might also do the recovery for you, although that gets a bit pricey since it would spend hours in the shop while that happens. Recovery is fairly simple, but it has a lot of small steps that could be done several ways depending on what you used to back it up. The simplest way would be if you took a bare drive and installed it in an "enclosure" and cloned your desktop drive as a "bootable" volume. In case of a crash, you could pull out the drive from the enclosure, install it in your desktop machine, and start booting up immediately from your cloned drive.
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Post by NebraskaVBfan93 on Oct 29, 2011 14:18:25 GMT -5
Very good information. Thank you for dumbing it down for me and for taking the time to do it.
And I failed to mention, I did take my Mac in and had the HD replaced and they were able to save all the information from the old one. I was lucky I think.
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Post by BearClause on Oct 29, 2011 15:46:54 GMT -5
Very good information. Thank you for dumbing it down for me and for taking the time to do it. And I failed to mention, I did take my Mac in and had the HD replaced and they were able to save all the information from the old one. I was lucky I think. OK. That can get rather pricey and often they won't be able to recover everything. There are some Macs where I wouldn't feel comfortable taking one apart to get to the hard drive. I've heard that some of the rectangular iMacs can get pretty nasty. The display cover has to be pried off with a suction device in order to access the inside. Then a dozen screws have to be loosened to pull off the bezel. The iSight camera has to be disconnected, at which point the case slides off. The LCD screen has to be removed. There are a lot of little things in the way that have to be moved and carefully replaced. I wouldn't ever try it myself. I'd pay someone who would take responsibility should something bad happen. gigaom.com/apple/how-to-replace-your-imacs-hard-drive/I mentioned my 2007 MacBook. It's really simple. Shut down. Remove the battery. Use a #0 Phillips screwdriver to loosen three screws to remove an L-shaped memory/drive shield. There's a tab that slides out and the drive is just yanked out. The drive is on a mounting bracket held with Torx T8 screws. It's a simple matter to transfer the bracket and screws to a new drive. I could do it in less than five minutes. www.ifixit.com/Guide/MacBook-Core-Duo-Hard-Drive-Replacement/282/1If you're talking a tower like a Mac Pro, I think it's pretty easy. Most drives go into a "cage" and are connected via a simple connector and power cable. There's typically a lot of room to work with, and even a novice should be able to figure it out. As for getting data off of a crashed hard drive, I've heard of recovery efforts where they were just hoping that the crashed drive would last long enough to get out as much data as possible. In the long run it's a lot easier to have a bootable backup. Macs can boot from an external hard drive if you have the drive set up correctly. You can be up and quickly running even with a crashed internal drive.
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Post by TheSantaBarbarian on Oct 29, 2011 16:46:19 GMT -5
Why not just get a USB 1 TerraByte external HD?
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Post by psumaui on Oct 29, 2011 18:46:31 GMT -5
I have 6 external HD for my movies/sports videos/photos. Total of 8 TB. If any of them crash I can still recover all my data just by using a simple file/data recovery program.
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Post by BearClause on Oct 29, 2011 18:53:05 GMT -5
Why not just get a USB 1 TerraByte external HD? Nothing wrong with that. However, there are so many different drives on the market. Some are 2.5" drives that are bus powered. Some are 3.5" drives that require a power brick. Then there's USB 2.0 vs 3.0. 1 TB is pretty cheap these days, but everyone has different requirements for capacity. I've heard of employers that issue computers loaded with a stripped down OS that uses 30 GB. With that little capacity, they can issue the computers with lower capacity, but high speed solid-state drives. If you set up with one of the Intel or Samsung SSDs, you can be absolutely blazing. If you have requirements for large storage, an external hard drive could be attached. If you've got large video files, you rarely need the kind of speed of an SSD. The SSDs really shine when it comes to booting and executing program files.
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Post by Not Me on Oct 29, 2011 19:23:43 GMT -5
I just got a Seagate 2 TB External HDD for my external storage. Works well, is quiet, and seagate is a pretty good brand. USB 2.0, as Firewire speed isn't something i need (macs don't use USB 3)
Easiest thing for you to do: 1) buy a drive 2) plug it in 3) turn on time machine on the mac. 4) tell time machine to use that drive for a back up.
Time machine will save everything, and will work in the background, saving versions of your files continuously.
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Post by NebraskaVBfan93 on Oct 30, 2011 0:01:05 GMT -5
Thanks Not Me. From the little research I've done over the last couple days along with the feedback I've got from you nice people, that seems to make the most sense for my needs.
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Post by TheSantaBarbarian on Oct 30, 2011 20:06:43 GMT -5
Thanks Not Me. From the little research I've done over the last couple days along with the feedback I've got from you nice people, that seems to make the most sense for my needs. One more thing. Buy it from Best Buy and then if you plug it in and there is any problem, you can return it. ;D
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