External Hard Drive for Mac (Non-Time Capsule)

trebor81

There's a lot of questions here relating to external hard drives for Macs, so excuse me if I'm repeating anything. I'm looking for a Mac-designed external hard drive, however I don't have the Leopard operating systems so the Time Capsule is a non-runner.

Anything else out there that will be as compatible? I've never used an external drive before so need something fool-proof and sturdy. Cheers.

Sad Professor

Any USB external hard drive should work. Most drives come with the filesystem pre-formated for Windows, so you'll have to reformat it as HFS+ (Mac OS Extended). This only takes a minute or two using Disk Utility.

Stick to the main brands - Western Digital or Seagate. There's not much difference. They are both as likely to fail as the other. Backup everything.

Both brands offer a "Mac version" but they are same thing except they usually have a Firewire port, which you might want to consider.

trebor81

Thanks for all that info.

Excuse my ignorance, but what would you need a firewire port for?

Germag

Firewire = Speed. I have a Fantom drive that I have used since OS 9 with no trouble and I have a 1TB Seagate (USB) that I used with OsX and now with Snow Leopard. Again no problems.

trebor81

Thanks for that.