Discussion External HD

[musical marv]

What is a good external hard drive to buy for the MBA 11inch 64HD to match up with? Thanks mary

 

[HugoStiglitz]

at the moment nothing. due to the natural disasters in production areas the price for HDD's hase risen 30-70% some cases even more. if its not a urgent thing i would try to wait.

 

[HugoStiglitz]

i would be looking at something in the 2.5" size to go with the Air, so ur keeping with the small and portable theme.

 

[jsc]

Bare drives have gone up about 30 - 40%. But there's still a lot of USB drives in the pipeline that are at their old prices.

 

[musical marv]

i would be looking at something in the 2.5" size to go with the Air, so ur keeping with the small and portable theme.

What about the new Seagate light weight external hard drives?

 

[halcyon]

What about the new Seagate light weight external hard drives?

Something along the lines of this may fit your needs

 

[Ijack]

I find that all of these portable drives are much of a muchness. I've got a 320GB version of that particular Seagate drive, and it works just fine. Just bear in mind that, if you are using it just on a Mac then it's a good idea to reformat it as HFS+ rather than sticking with the default FAT32 format.

Whatever you do, avoid special MAC external drives. In my experience they cost twice as much for exactly the same hardware.

 

[Yoder54]

Whatever you do, avoid special MAC external drives. In my experience they cost twice as much for exactly the same hardware.

Not sure what you mean by "special MAC external drives." Drives that target the Mac market will have FW800, and some are starting to put Thunderbolt ports on them, but the prices are the same unless you get nice solid metal enclosure. I have found the prices for FW800 drive to be the same as other comparable HD's. Personally I like Glyph and G-Tech, but I do own a couple of external Seagate's that have served me well. I wouldn't get anything smaller than 1 Tb.

 

[halcyon]

Not sure what you mean by "special MAC external drives." Drives that target the Mac market will have FW800, and some are starting to put Thunderbolt ports on them, but the prices are the same unless you get nice solid metal enclosure. I have found the prices for FW800 drive to be the same as other comparable HD's. Personally I like Glyph and G-Tech, but I do own a couple of external Seagate's that have served me well. I wouldn't get anything smaller than 1 Tb.

The OP has a MacBook Air...FW800 won't do him much good...without spending even more on a TB hub.

 

[musical marv]

I find that all of these portable drives are much of a muchness. I've got a 320GB version of that particular Seagate drive, and it works just fine. Just bear in mind that, if you are using it just on a Mac then it's a good idea to reformat it as HFS+ rather than sticking with the default FAT32 format.

Whatever you do, avoid special MAC external drives. In my experience they cost twice as much for exactly the same hardware.

I have a MBA with only 64HD with 2 gigs of ram. I want to download music and photos and this is crap what I have now. What do you suggest? thanks

 

[Ijack]

I'd get the Seagate one that was mentioned earlier (they come in several sizes). USB 2.0 isn't as fast an interface as Firewire or Thunderbolt, but it's fine for your purposes (and, of course, cheaper). Before you use it, use Disk Utility to reformat it as an HFS+ drive. You might want to use it as a Time Machine drive too. In that case I would partition it to dedicate a partition to TM.

 

[musical marv]

I'd get the Seagate one that was mentioned earlier (they come in several sizes). USB 2.0 isn't as fast an interface as Firewire or Thunderbolt, but it's fine for your purposes (and, of course, cheaper). Before you use it, use Disk Utility to reformat it as an HFS+ drive. You might want to use it as a Time Machine drive too. In that case I would partition it to dedicate a partition to TM.

Thanks for your response. May consider it.

 

[musical marv]

The OP has a MacBook Air...FW800 won't do him much good...without spending even more on a TB hub.

What is wrong with 500HD to get? For the MBA

 

[halcyon]

Nothing at all is wrong with getting a 500GB HDD, it ill fill up before a much larger one but if all you needs is <=500GB than that should suit you fine.

 

[Ijack]

Just a word of warning. Buy sooner rather than later. Hard disk prices are soaring. I think this is mainly affecting bare drives at the moment, but it's soon going to filter through to equipment with drives in them. And it's going to get worse before it gets better. Current estimates are that it may be a year or more before prices drop to the level they were at a few weeks back.

This is quite unusual, because of exceptional circumstances. We are used to a steady drop in disk prices. This is the first time that I can remember prices rising.

 

[musical marv]

Just a word of warning. Buy sooner rather than later. Hard disk prices are soaring. I think this is mainly affecting bare drives at the moment, but it's soon going to filter through to equipment with drives in them. And it's going to get worse before it gets better. Current estimates are that it may be a year or more before prices drop to the level they were at a few weeks back.

This is quite unusual, because of exceptional circumstances. We are used to a steady drop in disk prices. This is the first time that I can remember prices rising.

Account of the floods in Thailand happening now. So buy asap than later you are suggesting to me. Okay mary

 

[amdfangirl]

Unless you wait a year or so?

 

[musical marv]

Unless you wait a year or so?

Are you kidding me that long?marv

 

[leandrodafontoura]

To match an Air, you want this one....

http://www.g-technology.com/products/g-drive-slim.cfm

 

[amdfangirl]

Are you kidding me that long?marv

Well that's the other option.

Analysists predict the prices will peak and begin to fall Q2 2012 and I'm guessing by Q4 2012, the prices will be sane.

 

[Ijack]

To match an Air, you want this one....

http://www.g-technology.com/products/g-drive-slim.cfm

That's exactly what I meant when I said avoid special Mac drives. $20-30 more than a generic drive for exactly the same functionality.

 

[halcyon]

Well, it does have a nice Al casing. Hahaha. They're just riding the Apple tax wave...the drive isn't even 7,200RPM (if it was it'd surely be noted).

 

[musical marv]

To match an Air, you want this one....

Thanks]http://www.g-technology.com/products/g-drive-slim.cfm

Thanks i read their site it looks good. is is better than Seagate or Western Digital.