New Hard Drive... now what?

[Wingsley]

I was stopping in at Aldi, a German-owned semi-supermarket chain, and they have a center aisle where they offer spot specials on all kinds of non-grocery items. They were selling Toshiba Canvio Basics USB 3.0 portable hard drives (1.0 TB) for only $49. I grabbed the last one.

My question: I'm in an all-Mac home office environment, and portable hard drives like this tend to move between computers. We have late-model computers running MacOS 10.12 Sierra; both have USB 3 ports. What would be the best formatting to apply to this hard drive in Disk Utility?

 

[CoastalOR]

I was stopping in at Aldi, a German-owned semi-supermarket chain, and they have a center aisle where they offer spot specials on all kinds of non-grocery items. They were selling Toshiba Canvio Basics USB 3.0 portable hard drives (1.0 TB) for only $49. I grabbed the last one.

My question: I'm in an all-Mac home office environment, and portable hard drives like this tend to move between computers. We have late-model computers running MacOS 10.12 Sierra; both have USB 3 ports. What would be the best formatting to apply to this hard drive in Disk Utility?

The best for a all Mac environment is Mac OS Extended (Journaled).

 

[Wingsley]

The Toshiba hard drive has a weird USB cable; it has two connectors on the end that plugs into the back of the drive assembly. The two connectors (one looks like microUSB; the other one looks like a small unspecified port) are melded into one end. You must plug both into the hard drive in order to have it connected.

Maybe this is why this drive was $49. Is there a name for this kind of arrangement? Is it possible to buy other cables like this aftermarket? Or will this drive work with just a standard USB cable?

I could take a photo of it and post it here if that would help.

 

[hallux]

That's a standard Micro-USB 3.0 port. You might actually be able to use it with a standard MicroUSB cable but it will be at reduced speed.

USB 3.0 - Wikipedia

 

[Wingsley]

Where can I find pro-grade, high quality cables like this?

 

[hallux]

How long of a cable do you need? I don't have any personal experience with this particular cable but Amazon's Amazon Basics cables have gotten good reviews and are inexpensive...

Amazon.com: AmazonBasics USB 3.0 Cable - A-Male to Micro-B - 3 Feet (0.9 Meters): Computers & Accessories

 

[Wingsley]

3 feet might be enough, but I was also wondering about 6 ft. as well...