Apple → Recommendation for an external mobile HDD for Mac

I'm looking for a good external mobile HDD for my MacBook Pro for storing large RAW files.

Its mainly for having a simple mobile backup solution for my photos.

ATM I am looking at the G-DRIVE mobile USB:

»www.g-technology.com/pro ··· bile-usb

Any experience with this drive or G-technology anyone?

Or is there something better ?

Thanks!

TA

i use wd my passport studio fw/usb hdds.
plenty of room to store raw/video.
durable and inexpensive.

The real question is what's inside the box. I've been using Seagate drives for years without a problem. Every time my computer dies I just pop the old drives into new enclosures. This time around I purchased a Newer Technology Ministack to hold my photos. It has the same footprint as the Mac Mini. Not cheap but it has USB 3.0/2.0 and two Firewire 800 ports.

Over the last few months Apple has been recalling computers that shipped with Seagate drives so any external drive that has Seagate might be one to avoid, for now.

I own a few of these
»www.amazon.com/Passport- ··· 06Y5UV4A

They work great.

I use Oyen enclosures and then pick out a suitable drive separately. They are pretty cheap considering the excellent build quality.

I also have a bus powered CineRAID 2.5 inch enclosure and it works great too. Pop in 2 x 1TB 2.5" drives with RAID1 and you could protect those RAWs while still being pretty portable.

OP-First, any external drive will do. I recommend you buy USB 3.0, because even if your current computer does not have it, your next one will and 3.0 is much faster than 2.0. I prefer to buy complete enclosures instead of the drive and enclosure separately, because if you buy them and build it, and something goes wrong, each company will blame the other.

Since you don't say you are backing up the entire drive, just the raw files, I presume you don't have space to store the raw files on the internal disk. If you could store everything on the internal, you could just use time machine and backup everything nicely.

If you aren't going to keep a local copy, then the copy on the external disk isn't really a backup per se, and I would go with a RAID1 array like skeechan mentions. Note that this will protect you against a single drive failure, but it will NOT help you in case the filesystem gets corrupted, so it's not a true backup.

Thanks for the great options guys!

I am planning a trip to my sister in London Europe and I am planning on taking my DSLR my Macbook Pro and an external hard drive.

I want to dump the RAW files from the card onto the internal HDD first (to make quick corrections in LR if I have time..) but also writing them to the external HDD as a backup.

I guess bus powered is the way to go since I don't know if there is always a power outlet within reach.

Only 'bus powered' creates another question for me:

I have a very old Freecom 2.5'' external HDD that doesn't always spin up when only bus powered. Connect an external PS and its fine. (bus powered + opt. PS). It seems the USB port alone doesn't have enough power to spin up the drive.

So is this still an issue with modern 2.5'' drives?

TA

It isn't a problem since they will usually draw power from 2 USB ports. One will be data and power and the other supplying supplemental power. But with 5.4K or SSD drives I never had a problem using a single USB port.

My little WDD passport only had a single USB connection on the other end, not one of those dual-USB cables that draws from multiple ports. Since the drive wasn't the fastest, I bet it was a low-power mobile drive optimized for that purpose. I never had a problem with it, and it's still in use by my SO for her time machine backups.

Hi:

I use the Lacie 256GB SSD Thunderbolt drive with my rMBP for exactly that purpose. Aperture vaults and camera backups as well as Final Cut Pro files save lightening fast. It is also small and ruggedized, perfect for carrying about. Downside is it's pricy and the 256GB is too small for use as a Time Machine drive. The speed of this thing is amazing though.

Okay guys,

I think I will go with WD.

»store.apple.com/us/produ ··· e=5f&p=1

But there is this 'For Mac' version (link) and a 'standard' PC version.

Is the Mac version different from the standard one other than the file system ?

(The standard WD can be reformatted easily..)

Thanks !

TA

Nope, no difference aside from coming pre-formatted in HFS+.

I had one of those drives (returned it because I wound up not needing it). Quite zippy actually. Plus it supports hardware level encryption that worked well and didn't slow down the transfer speeds appreciably.

I picked up a WD My Passport 1 TB non Mac version.

Reformatted it to HFS+. Works great. Transfer speeds are good.

A good choice so far IMHO.

Thanks all.
I appreciate it!

TA