Any Experts On Portable Hard Drives?

[MattKellett]

So I'm looking to buy a portable hard drive to back up my photos stored on my PC, but I'd also like to use this hard drive to back up files on my wife's Mac.

Is it possible to use the same portable hard drive for the PC and Mac or would I need a separate one for each system?

Many thanks Tech Experts

[Neilk]

You can use the same hard drive for both, however, I would reformat the drives so you have a PC partition and a Mac partition. Some programs like iMovie, iPhoto and TimeMachine store some extra data that requires a Mac partition. Without getting overly technical, format the PC partition as FAT32 and not NTFS so your Mac can read it too.

[MattKellett]

Thanks Neil,

Now trying not to sound completely ignorant, my PC has Vista 64bit, is that compatible with Fat32?

[stomachmonkey]

Originally Posted by Neilk

You can use the same hard drive for both, however, I would reformat the drives so you have a PC partition and a Mac partition. Some programs like iMovie, iPhoto and TimeMachine store some extra data that requires a Mac partition. Without getting overly technical, format the PC partition as FAT32 and not NTFS so your Mac can read it too.

Just format the entire thing as FAT 32. If you do 2 partitions the PC can't access stuff you stored on the Mac partition.

If he is backing up files then there is no dependency for applications required, it's just a straight data copy.

OS X can read NTFS, just can't write it. But you want to avoid NTFS anyway as it's got a file size limit, can't write larger than a 4 GB file.

As for a drive I would buy the case/drive separately. You can get a better deal that way, not necc cheaper but more bang for the buck.

I also like the drive to have Firewire. A lot of the portable USB drives require utilizing 2 USB ports to supply enough power to spin em up. Or 1 USB port and a wall wart. You can daisy chain Firewire as well, I regularly run up to 3 portables off one Firewire port on my laptop with no issues.

For cases I pretty much buy only these,

For IDE drives
http://www.macally.com/EN/Product/ArticleShow.asp?ArticleID=100

For SATA drives
http://www.macally.com/EN/Product/ArticleShow.asp?ArticleID=201

Check NewEgg, I find them there for under $30 from time to time.

The SATA one,
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817347013

For the hard drive itself get a 7200 RPM drive. Faster is better.

320 GB SATA drive
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822145228

Most of the turnkey solutions you find at BestBuy etc... will either be 5400 RPM or not list rotational speed at all.

[MattKellett]

Stomachmonkey

Thanks for the great info, just what I was looking for.

I should have mentioned that I would like to be able to use both the PC and Mac files on either comp. So it sounds like I can do this by formatting with FAT32. This drive is only going to be used for backing up photos and sharing them from computer to computer when not using our home network.

[Radioactive]

FAT32 single file size limit is 4GB
NTFS unlimited

[stomachmonkey]

Originally Posted by Radioactive

FAT32 single file size limit is 4GB
NTFS unlimited

Yeah, I get them confused. Blame it on not having first cup of coffee.

Never understood the logic behind it.

[stomachmonkey]

Originally Posted by MattKellett

Stomachmonkey

Thanks for the great info, just what I was looking for.

I should have mentioned that I would like to be able to use both the PC and Mac files on either comp. So it sounds like I can do this by formatting with FAT32. This drive is only going to be used for backing up photos and sharing them from computer to computer when not using our home network.

Drives usually come pre-formatted MS_DOS which is fine.

If it needs formatting then do it on the Mac, just easier. Run Disk Utility and do MS-DOS.

I use almost exclusively Macs and format all my external drives that way.

Most of the turn key solutions are glued together meaning they are a ***** to take apart if you need to swap the drive for any reason.

[nota]

I would use one on each machine
and back up data daily

you can get them with 1000gigs for $100 or so
cheap ins

[Neilk]

I don't think you can back up your iMovie projects on non-Mac formatted drives nor use TimeMachine. I know it kind of sucks not to be able to view all the Mac files from the PC, but you can back up individual files to the FAT partition and the backup Mac files on the Mac partition.

[stomachmonkey]

Originally Posted by Neilk

I don't think you can back up your iMovie projects on non-Mac formatted drives nor use TimeMachine. I know it kind of sucks not to be able to view all the Mac files from the PC, but you can back up individual files to the FAT partition and the backup Mac files on the Mac partition.

You need to think of Time Machine as a restore point not as a traditional file backup.

Meaning when you view the volume there is one file that contains the contents of the back up set. You can't simply browse it in a finder window looking for any individual file like pics from Granmas 90th b-day party.

He's looking to use it to create a backup of select files and to move them from machine to machine.

The issue with FAT discs will not be that the data is not possible to write to it, it'll be a limitation of file name length and characters like spaces. Remember FAT16 is 8.3, 8 characters dot 3 character extension, doc, jpg, etc....

FAT 32 will tolerate longer file names.

FAT is weird in partition size limitations and crap like that which fortunately I have long ago forgotten most of the intricacies.

However if you format MS-DOS (FAT) using the Disk Utility under OS X many of those gotchas are not applied as they would be if formatted under Windows.

In other words if you need to format a disc for Windows do it on a Mac. Ironic that OS X formats Windows discs better than Windows.