Macbook Back up drives?

AdamZ

AdamZ

Touchdown! Greaser!
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Adam Zucker
I need to get a back up drive for my daughter's mac book. The highschool work she is doing on it is getting pretty intense. Big reports etc. Her girlfriends mac recently crashed and she lost everything. Yes the Mac crashed ( I can hear Ed laughing now) So to prevent a hysterical fit and the loss of some very hard work on her part I want to get her a back updrive to use with Time Machine which I think is installed on the MacBooks ( were just about to put snow leopard in)

I like Western digital for my PCs and I can find them realatively inexpensive but not sure what to use for her macbook that will work and won't break the bank. Mostly she has school work and photos. Thanks for the advice.
 
Yes the Timeport is cool. I am now on my second one. I upgraded from the 1TB to a 2TB when we got the 2nd computer and it recently saved my SO's butt.

Over the 4th of July weekend her MacBook started showing some weird problems. It turned out her hard drive was dying. I went to the Apple Store and they told me to replace her 250gig drive it would be $170 and it would take about 7 days OR I could just install any 2.5" hard drive. The Genius even looked up and said that there was one at the Best Buy across the street for $45.

I went over to the Best Buy and got her a 500gig one instead of the 250gig. Came home and installed it (20 minutes). Then ran the back up from the Timeport and she was back and running with no lose of files, applications or anything else. It was simple to do the restore. Even a caveman, attorney, or 8 year old could have done it! ;)

BTW the drive I installed in her computer was a Western Digital one. The next week I also upgraded my 320gig drive to a 500 gig drive and it was just as easy.
 
Probably overkill for your situation. But I use a LaCie RAID which is on my home network. I use it to backup 5 different computers in my home.

For a directly connected backup, I use a LaCie Rugged drive (actually I have 2, plus one of their encrypted drives). The reason I picked that kind was because they have the firewire port plus the USB port.
 
AdamZ said:
I need to get a back up drive for my daughter's mac book. The highschool work she is doing on it is getting pretty intense. Big reports etc. Her girlfriends mac recently crashed and she lost everything. Yes the Mac crashed ( I can hear Ed laughing now) So to prevent a hysterical fit and the loss of some very hard work on her part I want to get her a back updrive to use with Time Machine which I think is installed on the MacBooks ( were just about to put snow leopard in)

I like Western digital for my PCs and I can find them realatively inexpensive but not sure what to use for her macbook that will work and won't break the bank. Mostly she has school work and photos. Thanks for the advice.
Click to expand...

Adam,

Which model Macbook? We'll also need to know how big the hard drive is that's inside it.

If you're running Leopard (10.5.x), then yes, Time Machine is available to you. I'd recommend doing the backup *before* upgrading to SL, just in case something goes wrong with the update.

I'll give you the same advice I gave Gary: go to OWC and select one of the portable, bus-powered FW/USB On-The-Go drives when you know how big of one to get (of course, bigger is always better when it comes to backups):

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/on-the-go

You won't be sorry.
 
rpadula said:
Hey Gary,

How did you find that old thread? It doesn't show on the main page, it's so old! Is your daughter's drive still going strong?
Click to expand...

It's on the Technical sub-forum, just go back 8 months!

It was great! Worked right off the bat and I haven't heard any complaints.

Gary
 
Thanks Rich, Her Macbook has a 120gig hard drive so the Apple wonks said to get one that is 250g.
 
You'd need to supply your own enclosure, but I've got a spare 120G Apple-branded (I think it's actually a Fujitsu) drive that I pulled out of my macbookpro when I upgraded it. PM me if you want it.
 
Yep. I got an aluminum fw800 one that I use as a recovery drive. It's nice because you can boot off of it in an emergency if the internal drive bites the wax tadpole.
 
AdamZ said:
I need to get a back up drive for my daughter's mac book. The highschool work she is doing on it is getting pretty intense. Big reports etc. Her girlfriends mac recently crashed and she lost everything. Yes the Mac crashed ( I can hear Ed laughing now) So to prevent a hysterical fit and the loss of some very hard work on her part I want to get her a back updrive to use with Time Machine which I think is installed on the MacBooks ( were just about to put snow leopard in)

I like Western digital for my PCs and I can find them realatively inexpensive but not sure what to use for her macbook that will work and won't break the bank. Mostly she has school work and photos. Thanks for the advice.
Click to expand...

Well, to be correct - If her friend's "Mac crashed and she lost everything" then it was actually the hard drive. Hard drives are the same, Mac or PC.

On to backup: The weakest link in any backup system is the human. For that reason, a Time Capsule from Apple or other such wireless backup system would be the best (I'm not aware of any others, but that doesn't mean much). That way, any time she opens up her computer at home, it'll automatically get backed up - No human intervention of any sort needed.

If you can get her in the habit of plugging in a drive, EVERY day, and preferably all the time while she's working on those Big Projects so that the hourly versions get saved as well, then a standard external drive will work. She's got USB 2 ports on her MacBook, which work with darn near any drive out there at a reasonable speed.

Be aware that the first backup will take quite a while - I would plan on letting it run overnight.

Given that I'm probably too late on this... What'd you get her?
 
Advice to ANYONE who has had a Mac Hard drive crash. Before giving up on the disk get a copy of DISKWARRIOR. Not cheep at $100. But I have only had one case where it could not recover a drive. But then that one would not even power up. (I also recommend replacing the drive after recovery with DiskWarrior. )

As for a backup drive, just about anything out there will do. Drives have gotten so cheep get a 1 or2 TB. First TimeMachine back up will take awhile. And it does no good if it is not regularity connected. Just remember they are cheep and are much more prone to failure they drives of a few years ago. But it is unlikely that both your backup and computer drive will go at the same time. If you want get a RAID 1 (NOT RAID 0!) back up drive.

Dave, ACTC*

Apple Certified Technical Consultant
 
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