I've been looking for an external hard drive for my mac and I see that there are a few that are "specifically" for a mac. Do I need one of those or is that a scam?

 

Also, are there any deals out there that anyone knows about? I need to buy two of them.

Unless you are looking to make extensive use of the Time Capsule back-up thingy, no, you don't need to buy a drive that is exclusively for a Mac. You will need to reformat the drive if it is not Mac-formatted and if you want to take advantage of journaled content searches, but that is easy enough.

 

Mac Mall has amazing deals on terrabyte drives from Fantom (my preference) and others. I particularly like the drives that have Firewire 1 and 2 as well as USB 2 connectivity.

I've been looking for an external hard drive for my mac and I see that there are a few that are "specifically" for a mac. Do I need one of those or is that a scam?

 

Also, are there any deals out there that anyone knows about? I need to buy two of them.

You don't have to buy one made for the mac, but I would get one because those usually have the firewire connections. USB 2.0 is just too slow these days.

You don't have to buy one made for the mac, but I would get one because those usually have the firewire connections. USB 2.0 is just too slow these days.

 

Agreed, and those drives are going to be labeled for cross-platform, so you don't have to pay a premium for a mac-exclusive drive just so it will match the look of you mini or your base station.

They all work for everyting. I have over a 1.5 TB's in hard drives and external drives attached to my imac.

You can get any external drive for a Mac, be it USB or Firewire, it will work, and it will work perfectly with the Time Machine backup software. There are no advantages to brand specifics other than speed, quietness, etc...that you'll have to look up and compare based on customer reviews.

You can get any external drive for a Mac, be it USB or Firewire, it will work, and it will work perfectly with the Time Machine backup software. There are no advantages to brand specifics other than speed, quietness, etc...that you'll have to look up and compare based on customer reviews.

I wanted to mention I've even had success moving one from a PC to a mac pretty seamlessly. I am not a fan of time machine, but I do my own backups and keep all of my real data off of my mac on 2 replicated external hardrives. Amazon has great deals on these drives.

I wanted to mention I've even had success moving one from a PC to a mac pretty seamlessly. I am not a fan of time machine, but I do my own backups and keep all of my real data off of my mac on 2 replicated external hardrives. Amazon has great deals on these drives.

 

Time machine works great, just not with their built in software.

 

I have a time machine addon that lets me set what and when to do backups. I basically set it to do a backup once a week on any files that have changed, and one base backup a month.

 

Works wonderfully.

Time machine works great, just not with their built in software.

 

I have a time machine addon that lets me set what and when to do backups. I basically set it to do a backup once a week on any files that have changed, and one base backup a month.

 

Works wonderfully.

Dude, hook a brotha up. Their software is crap, does a FULL backup for some reason, WTF do I need that for. Its a complete waste of drive space.

Dude, hook a brotha up. Their software is crap, does a FULL backup for some reason, WTF do I need that for. Its a complete waste of drive space.

 

Default, the only full backup you have from time machine is your first backup -- from that point on it's doing differentials only on files that change, the problem is, it's doing it way too much. I think by default, it backs up once an hour any changes that are made, and just using an OS changes files, so it's constantly making incremental backups.

 

Those are not all full backups, though, even if they look like it. If you actually go into the drive, you'll see the sizes of the backups aren't full, they're just pointing to the unchanged files from a previous backup.

 

I believe the app is called time machine editor, I'm not home right now so I can't check at the moment. I only do one backup a week (maybe it's a month). Aside from the first, they're differential backups.

Edited November 10, 200916 yr by Y2HH

Default, the only full backup you have from time machine is your first backup -- from that point on it's doing differentials only on files that change, the problem is, it's doing it way too much. I think by default, it backs up once an hour any changes that are made, and just using an OS changes files, so it's constantly making incremental backups.

 

Those are not all full backups, though, even if they look like it. If you actually go into the drive, you'll see the sizes of the backups aren't full, they're just pointing to the unchanged files from a previous backup.

 

I believe the app is called time machine editor, I'm not home right now so I can't check at the moment. I only do one backup a week (maybe it's a month). Aside from the first, they're differential backups.

Ah, well the frequency is still ridiculous. There is no need for it to backup that often, especially since most of my stuff isnt kept on my mac anyway. I have a high availability system with replication across two drives.