Mac portable hard drive

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bigrich110

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Bit of a newbie question here I have recently moved over to a MacBook Pro and I am looking for a external hard drive for it to backup my files and keep my music on.

What would you guys be recommending. hard drive has to be portable as I have a network backup drive at home but don't always have access to the Internet.
Also if it is Mac configured can it then be plugged into a Windows system or plugged in to see a media centre so you can play movies off it I've no idea and don't want to invest in a hard drive that I won't be able to use elsewhere as well.

Cheers in advance
Rich
 
Any good portable hard drive would do the trick. Generally they come pre-formated for windows but in a format that a mac can read. Just look on the box and it'll say if its Windows and /or Mac compatible. I've used various ones from different manufacturers, and in all casses worked well. If you think it's going to have a tough time looked at the "Rugged" versions. But I've found that for general use the standard models work well.
 
Any USB 3 portable external hard drive will do just fine. If you want to use on Mac and PC, then format as exFAT which can be read and written to by either OS.

Disk Utility on the Mac will do the reformat for you.

NB Time Machine won't back up to an exFAT drive.
 
Brilliant cheers guys the one I've got currently is an old Western Digital 320 gigabyte hard drive which is left in the years but unfortunately USB port is starting to fail and I need to replace it also the MacBook Pro hard drive is only a third of what used to be on my old laptop hence why I need some external as well as the cloud storage which I've got at home I'm seriously tempted by another Western Digital as long as it will stand up to the job
 
Ok I'll look into the hard drives my Western Digital 1 a minute I think is currently a passport one but not sure it is rather up at least 7 or so years old
 
Of you want something fast and reliable I use the LaCie thunderbolt drives. Expensive but pretty future proof. Very fast and great for 4K.
 
I've had a couple of toshiba external HDDs that I've used for backup, the oldest is about 7 years now & still good. Avoid the small Samsung drives - they have the USB connector soldered direct to the drive.
 
Muzzieman said:
Of you want something fast and reliable I use the LaCie thunderbolt drives. Expensive but pretty future proof. Very fast and great for 4K.
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If you're willing to pay the ~£100 Thunderbolt tax, then you'll get around a 40-50% speed increase.
 
I never said they were a bargain!! Storage can be a real problem though backing everything up. Backups of the backups. Off site storage it's never ending! Any USB Hd will do the job but back everything up!!
 
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Silly question is it worth making my own hard drive with an old laptop hard drive as I have a few hard drives at home that I have no use for and could make use of as a portable hard drive thoughts and theories on this one
 
bigrich110 said:
Silly question is it worth making my own hard drive with an old laptop hard drive as I have a few hard drives at home that I have no use for and could make use of as a portable hard drive thoughts and theories on this one
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Should be easy, you can get many a cheap enclosure. I doubt it will be fast, but if that isn't the priority then no issue.

A laptop drive (2.5"?) should be able to run USB powered as well. Make certain you get an enclosure like that as it makes it so much easier.
 
dejongj said:
Should be easy, you can get many a cheap enclosure. I doubt it will be fast, but if that isn't the priority then no issue.

A laptop drive (2.5"?) should be able to run USB powered as well. Make certain you get an enclosure like that as it makes it so much easier.
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Will do I know they are 2.5 inch drives and I'll make sure I get a USB 3 connector aswell so it works well with the mac
 
bigrich110 said:
Will do I know they are 2.5 inch drives and I'll make sure I get a USB 3 connector aswell so it works well with the mac
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To be honest I'd save your money and get a standard usb2 enclosure, the drive will not use usb3 speeds at all unless it is a ssd with sata6 perhaps.
 
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