External FireWire 1.5 TB HDD
I find that my old external Firewire HDD is not adequate to handle SuperDuper and Time Machine backups from a 1TB iMac. Therefore I am hunting for a 1.5 TB FireWire HDD.
Has anyone found one you like?
It's odd, but Local CompUSA, Best Buy, Office Depot, Staples, and Office Max do not carry FireWire 1.5TB HDD's. I'll have to get one online as soon as I find one I can trust.
I imagine that the Apple Store carries only LaCie, but I've had problems with the one I have and would like to try another brand especially since I found that LaCie doesn't make their own HDD's and puts another brand in LaCie enclosures.
I was leaning toward the Seagate FreeAgent, but I am OPEN to suggestions - or criticisms of HDD's that you have had trouble with.
Would the time of backing up to a USB 2.0 HDD be much more than to a FireWire HDD? Right now, I have only 250 MB on the iMac, but it'll most likely grow.
Thanks
Has anyone found one you like?
It's odd, but Local CompUSA, Best Buy, Office Depot, Staples, and Office Max do not carry FireWire 1.5TB HDD's. I'll have to get one online as soon as I find one I can trust.
I imagine that the Apple Store carries only LaCie, but I've had problems with the one I have and would like to try another brand especially since I found that LaCie doesn't make their own HDD's and puts another brand in LaCie enclosures.
I was leaning toward the Seagate FreeAgent, but I am OPEN to suggestions - or criticisms of HDD's that you have had trouble with.
Would the time of backing up to a USB 2.0 HDD be much more than to a FireWire HDD? Right now, I have only 250 MB on the iMac, but it'll most likely grow.
Thanks
Comments
Has anyone found one you like?
I was going to say the Lacie 2TB one as it has RAID. I have one and it backs up pretty quickly. But if you've had trouble with Lacie, another brand might be better.
I was leaning toward the Seagate FreeAgent, but I am OPEN to suggestions - or criticisms of HDD's that you have had trouble with.
Someone I work with has a FreeAgent. It's a very nice design unlike Lacie's industrial design but it doesn't have a metal enclosure, just plastic (not great for cooling) and it has no power button. It does its own power management which means that it keeps going to sleep so if you leave it plugged in, it causes the momentary freeze on your system when it has to wake up again. It's pretty quiet though and the glowing lights are a nice addition - they fade on and off during a transfer.
Would the time of backing up to a USB 2.0 HDD be much more than to a FireWire HDD?
It would take over twice as long as Firewire 800. It should be fairly close to Firewire 400 though.
USB 2 is about 25MB/s = 11 hours to backup 1TB
Firewire 400 is about 30MB/s = 9 hours for 1TB
Firewire 800 is 60MB/s = 4.5 hours for 1TB
Firewire 800 with RAID depends on your source read speed so probably 80MB/s = 3.5 hours for 1TB
The first backup should take a while but subsequent backups are much quicker. Also bear in mind RAID-0 is faster but less reliable for backup as you double the risk of losing data to a drive failure.
Western Digital is a good brand and they have a RAID-0 2TB drive:
http://store.apple.com/us/product/TR717ZM/A
What I'd try to do is avoid having duplicate backups for things that don't change. Put the stuff that doesn't change much into your Superduper backup (system folders, applications, music, movies) and your daily files/emails etc into your Time Machine backup. Add exclude folders to Time Machine to skip the bigger things out.
On a 1TB drive, your single Superduper backup should be the full 250GB you've used and Time Machine just tracks the changes and would be under 100GB.
Don't backup itunes music twice as purchases are remembered on itunes anyway in the worst case that you lost any tracks between the Superduper backup and the drive failure.
You always come through when I'm in trouble or don't know what the hell I'm doing. Your post was as complete as I could hope for,
Thanks, one more time!
I wouldn't fool with RAID 0 external HDD for TM back-ups. That makes no sense at all to me.
Look here. They're a bit on the expensive side but well worth it.
Please explain the rationale for a RAID 0 TM backup.
I wouldn't fool with RAID 0 external HDD for TM back-ups. That makes no sense at all to me.
Look here. They're a bit on the expensive side but well worth it.
Looks good to me. I don't know what the hell I'd do without you guys. I'd be in limbo like the rest of the non-AI Mac users.
Thanks