External hard drives in Japan can't speak English!!

[DaveinJapan]

K, been working on a few projects and I've maxed out my PB hard drive. Need an external asap, preferably as large as possible and very Mac friendly...BUT, I went shopping today and, living in Japan, all the hard drives only "speak" Japanese (Japanese interface).

So, I guess my options are to go to ebay and find a friendly person who deals with international shipping (hard to find, but I've done it before and I already found a seller in Canada selling a Maxtor HD 250 that looks promising)...so, first of all, my question is will an external HD from America be compatible with my Japanese powerbook (all the installs were in English though...), and second, what exactly should I be looking for? Are there some better than others as far as communicating with my Mac? Are some faster? What specs do I need (see below for my setup)?

Any help would be much appreciated! Thanks.

 

[CanadaRAM]

Would you please clarify your statement that the hard drive has a Japanese interface which is incompatible/different from your Mac?

You don't need any third-party software on an external firewire drive on a Mac...

Applications: Utilities: Disk Utility: Erase

OTOH, if you have one of those top secret talking hard drives, and it only speaks Japanese, well, I'd be p!$$#& too...

 

[Kushiro]

I flipped between Japan and the US for years, and I've never had any problems with computer peripherals--just as long as you look for the little 'apple-compatable' logo, you should do just fine. Check out the nearest Yodobashi Camera, they usually have a reasonable selection of Apple and Apple compatible products.

-Kush

 

[gangst]

Any Maxtor or Lacie drive will work, and they are available in Japan, right?

 

[superbovine]

K, been working on a few projects and I've maxed out my PB hard drive. Need an external asap, preferably as large as possible and very Mac friendly...BUT, I went shopping today and, living in Japan, all the hard drives only "speak" Japanese (Japanese interface).

So, I guess my options are to go to ebay and find a friendly person who deals with international shipping (hard to find, but I've done it before and I already found a seller in Canada selling a Maxtor HD 250 that looks promising)...so, first of all, my question is will an external HD from America be compatible with my Japanese powerbook (all the installs were in English though...), and second, what exactly should I be looking for? Are there some better than others as far as communicating with my Mac? Are some faster? What specs do I need (see below for my setup)?

Any help would be much appreciated! Thanks.

hard drive is a hard drive. there isn't a difference. the only difference in buying one in japan is make sure you get one with a power supply unit that is 120/220 so you can travel with it in states (assuming you are from the states) as well. all the external hard drive psu i have bought have been 120/220.

 

[yellow]

Don't you know? The firewire cable in Japan is 65% smaller and more efficient.

 

[DaveinJapan]

Sorry for the confusion! I guess what I meant is that the menus and stuff are in Japanese rather than English? That's what the guys at the store kept telling me anyway, is that not the case? I know NOTHING about external harddrives and was assuming that the computer was the "brain" and that everything would be in English (the way I installed it), but the salespeople kept saying "Japanese only" or something.

So I should be fine with any hard drive, then?

 

[DaveinJapan]

One more thing, CanadaRAM, you mentioned an external firewire device...seems like a lot of the drives I looked at are USB2. Would that be any different, or should I be looking for a firewire drive? I'm really new at this stuff, and the Powerbook is great so I want to find a hard drive with a really fast connection so I don't have to slow down when I'm connected to it.

"OTOH, if you have one of those top secret talking hard drives, and it only speaks Japanese, well, I'd be p!$$#& too..."

lol.

 

[yellow]

1) It's just a hard drive. It doesn't have it's own menus. It just mounts on your desktop and you copy whatever you want to/from it.

2) Definitely go with Firewire. USB2 implementation on the Mac isn't fantastic, and I read plenty of posts at plenty of places where USB2 drives don't work. Also, we don't know what kind of Mac you have (besides "powerbook") and it might not have USB2 ports.

 

[DaveinJapan]

Thanks, Yellow. What external drives use Firewire 800 anyway? I'm wondering what my Firewire 800 port looks like, and where it's located.

Here's a screenshot that explains my USB setup (whatever it means, I have no clue ).

Oh, and it says my Firewire is up to 800Mb per second as well.