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External HDD

Fonzijr1964

Fonzijr1964

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Feb 26, 2008
1,648
1
Maryland
I have had my iMac for a few months and i need a good HDD to hook to my Airport Extreme to use with time machine and possibly to store files for my Vista partition. I was looking at the My Book Studio but i would like to hear your experiences and suggestions.

thanks
 
I have been digging and digging for a good HDD for TM and everything I have found has been generally people love them or hate them. Thats all HDDs not just the WD My Book. Best Buy has these on sale this week I think I'm going to bite the bullet and get one. Only thing I can recommend is to stay away from Seagate drives these seem to have a higher reported failure rate then WD or maxtor, from what I can tell at least. Its still a moving part it's a gamble. Im sure that you will get a hundred different answers on this one. Good luck.
 
i use the OWC mercury elite pro which will match your aluminium iMac. its been great for me and uses the Maxtor 6 L250R0 hard drive.

its a 3.5" desktop hard drive so it has a power brick so if you want it to be BUS powered (no power brick) get a passport external drive i.e. 2.5" notebook hard drive. OWC has the On-The-Go 2.5" external drive, but its see-thru which i find to be so late 90s :D.

also as its only going to be connected to your Airport Extreme just get Firewire 400 + USB to save the cost http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/1394/USB/EliteAL/400+USB2/. but if you want just a USB external go with that!
 
yeah i have a passport but i put my own HDD in it (i just bought the shell) I think i should just get the My Book studio because it is silver like my imac and i can put it behind it or lay it down as apposed to the option the most recent poster gave.
 
IMO, it's best to buy the external enclosure and drive separately. That's about the
only way to be sure you're getting a high-performance drive -- and it's often less
expensive than a "pre-assembled" external with an "economy" drive mechanism.

With a separate external enclosure it's easy to upgrade or swap drives (without
voiding the warranty) -- you also get the drive manufacturer's full warranty
coverage (5 yrs for Seagate drives). ...just TRY to open a MyBook sometime!

There are lots of good SATA-based enclosures (look for an Oxford OXUF924/934
chipset). Here are my favorites -- good prices, handy slide-in trays, quiet (fanless),
and simple assembly (four screws, no messing with internal cables/connectors):

Icy Dock USB/FW800 enclosure @ $80

Icy Dock USB/FW400 enclosure @ $45

Icy Dock review & photos (USB/FW400 version)

Some FAST drive mechanisms: (> 100 MByte/sec sustained R/W)

500 GB: Seagate ST3500320AS, Samsung HD502IJ

750 GB: Seagate ST3750330AS, Samsung HD753LJ

1000GB: Seagate ST31000340AS or Samsung HD103UJ

Any FW800 external will work on a FW400 port (with a cheap 6-pin to 9-pin
firewire cable). So, more expensive "quad interface" drives have no advantage
over simple USB/FW800 units. (The eSATA interface is useless with iMacs.)

LK
 
i just want to buy it and have it work i dont want to take anything apart again and it wii not match
 
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