Western Digital Passport Drive

Breezer

Been looking for a decent drive to make a bootable backup with. Since I already have a 400GB external drive for any media etc. I don't want to spend big bucks, just want it to be big enough to fit the entire contents of my internal drive, so I was looking at this Western Digital Passport II 250GB USB 2.0.

Questions:

1) My internal hard drive is a 250GB Samsung drive. When formatted, it holds 232.57GB. Since I want to clone this onto the WD, am I taking a risk that the storage capacity of the WD when formatted will be slightly less that 232.57GB? Would I be better off going for a 300GB drive?

2) Anyone got any experience making Passport drives bootable? I've had a less than fun experience with my Freecom drive (unbootable from my MacBook even when set to GUID with a clean install of Tiger on it - it seems to take too long to start up or something).

Thanks in advance!

EDIT: Having said all that, I don't really need the portability, and I've discovered I can get more space for less money, so why not? If anyone has anything to say about booting from the Seagate FreeAgent 500GB USB2.0 I'd be very happy to hear!

grumpypaddy

hi Breezer,

i have the two drives you mention, the wd i have has a listed cpacity of 232.9 gigs. i use it for time machine back ups for a macbook and it works fine. the wd i have is either firewire or usb, you screw an attachment for whatever you want into the bottom of it. i havent used it as a bootable drive but it is very quiet

Breezer

Thanks grumpypaddy, that's one question answered anyway

Decided to rephrase my question a bit - what drives do people use as bootable backups? Thanks.

jpfahy

Firewire drives are better than USB imo. I use Icybox enclosures from marxcomputers.ie with IDE drives in them. Imaging done with SuperDuper. Performance nearly as good as an internal drive.

deevey

Firewire all the way with macs IMO ...seeing as they are bootable its a VERY handy option if you have any issues.

I would reccommend a 500gig drive with 2 partitions.

make a clone of the disk every so often on a partition using superduper.. TimeMachine day to day on the other partiton.

My 2 cents.

jmck87

deevey wrote: »

Firewire all the way with macs IMO ...seeing as they are bootable its a VERY handy option if you have any issues.

Like the OP, i too was thinking of getting a WD passport drive for backups.

Are USB drives not bootable too? Or is it just firewire has superior performance?

deevey

Nope there is no booting off USB ... theres little in the price difference of USB or Firewire or even combo drives at this stage and the fact you can boot to backup is priceless.

TBH Idont like the WD externals anyhoo

Breezer

Hi deevey, thanks for the reply. USB drives are bootable on Intel Macs provided they are set to use the GUID partition table. I'm familiar with Carbon Copy Cloner and SuperDuper and the general procedure for cloning and booting.

My problem lies in the fact that the particular drive I bought, a 400GB Freecom model, does not allow booting no matter what I do. I've used the same procedure to boot from an iPod (connected via USB) in disk mode, so it's definitely the drive that's the problem. I've seen a few posts on Freecom's forums with the same problem, but no solution.

I'm looking for a recommendation of a USB drive that will boot (speed doesn't concern me as I'll only be using it for backup, therefore I don't see the point in spending extra money on Firewire, even if it is a relatively small amount). I assume a lot of people here have a working solution and I'm just wondering what drives people use, as in brand and model?

I realise I went about this the wrong way in my original post, but unfortunately I can't edit it anymore or delete my own thread!

deevey

Well theres me feeling like an ass ! I Didnt realize you could boot from USB on the intel macs .. live and learn it could have saved me lots of time a few months back.

Ironically I just got presented a WD passport from work today and
.... made a bootable backup with superduper no probs.

Also tried with a no-name 2.5 media centre type hard drive and a seagate 3.5 and a USB Nas enclosure that had USB, without any issues .. so Im guess most drives should just work.

Breezer

Happy to help

And that was my general feeling, that Freecom were just a bit shoddy and most should work fine, but I wanted to hear names of companies from someone on here first before I blew another €100 or so.

Thanks a mill, think I'll probably invest in the Seagate one I mentioned in my first post. 500GB for €91 seems like a great bargain to me