USB Drive for backup

backtomacbacktomac
Posted:
in Genius Bar edited January 2014
I just bought a nice SMALL western digital usb external drive and cloned my hard drive to it. Used super duper, which was quite nice. Anyway I probably should have got a firewire drive but saw this thing and bought it before really thinking. Will it work out as a backup drive?

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 4
    kareliakarelia Posts: 525member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by backtomac View Post


    I just bought a nice SMALL western digital usb external drive and cloned my hard drive to it. Used super duper, which was quite nice. Anyway I probably should have got a firewire drive but saw this thing and bought it before really thinking. Will it work out as a backup drive?



    It will, but not as a bootable volume. Not a major issue, as you can just boot from the restore disc and restore the backup to a new internal drive should your current internal drive fail.
  • Reply 2 of 4
    backtomacbacktomac Posts: 4,579member
    Thanks for input. Sounds ok to me. Next time I'm out, I'll look into a firewire drive. I could probably use an extra backup anyway.
  • Reply 3 of 4
    MarvinMarvin Posts: 15,326moderator
    It will work fine as a bootable drive if you have an Intel Mac. It was only the PPC that had problems booting from USB.



    I've booted systems and run them over both USB and firewire on my Intel Mac and I don't really notice the difference in performance.



    Backups should be ok too.
  • Reply 4 of 4
    backtomacbacktomac Posts: 4,579member
    Marvin,



    If I get a firewire external drive, will I need a FW 800 drive to see a difference in performance compared to a USB external drive?
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