[CTeditor]

Hi, I'm looking at getting a Western Digital 1 terabyte hard drive, I've seen one at office works for $95 but I think they are formatted for windows, so I'm not sure about how to go with formatting for the mac.

I have a 24" imac with 600 gig hard drive. So I want to use this as my main backup but also want to be able to use it with a PC.
At the moment I have a 320gig WD which has been doing well, except you can only put files on that are smaller than 5gig. I work in video editing so it's not that rare to get files bigger than 5gig. (I have a few on my pc that i need to get to the imac)

So basically if anyone knows of the hard drive I'm looking at or has some advice, I would appreciate it.

[Anthony Caruana]

The "Formatted for Mac" thing is really just marketing spin. You can buy the $95 drive (not a recommendation by the way), connect it and then go in Disk Utility, erase the drive and reformat it as a Mac drive.

There's no actual difference to the physical drives.

Anthony

[CTeditor]

Thanks for the response Anthony, I am aware that the drive can be reformatted for mac, but can I format it to work on both mac and PC.
Why do you say its not recommended, what would you recommend?

[Ken Gracey]

$95.00 bucks for a 1 terabyte drive... Wow thats cheap, how on earth have that got them that low ?

To run both systems ( and i am sure Anthony or Mick will correct me if i am wrong) but i think you need to format it as FAT32, so the Win machine is Happy, and the Mac, wont really care either way.




TL

[mickdevlin]

Correct. If the drive is formatted as NTFS, the Mac will read it but can't write to it.

[Anthony Caruana]

Quote

Thanks for the response Anthony, I am aware that the drive can be reformatted for mac, but can I format it to work on both mac and PC.
Why do you say its not recommended, what would you recommend?

With external drives, I reckon it's a bit of a lottery at the moment. Putting aside the GB/$ getting better almost every week, the cost of the cases is also coming down and, in my view, the quality of the components is falling as well.

I'm hearing a lot of people complain of one year old drives failing. However, the drives themselves are fine - it's usually the power supply or circuitry in the device that's fried.

I'd shop around for a decent drive (Seagate, WD, Samsung, etc - all are OK, just make sure the seller is someone you trust) and buy the case separately and put them together. It's really very easy to do and often doesn't even require a screwdriver.

That way, if the power supply fails, you'll know how to crack the case and get another drive.

If you need serious storage space and reliability, then buy a NAS so you have some redundancy in your setup.

Anthony

[golfer]

Anthony, I still haven't seen a review from you on Drobo?

[CTeditor]

Thanks guys, so if I was to go with this drive I just format as FAT32 and it'll go both ways that sounds good.

I'd shop around for a decent drive (Seagate, WD, Samsung, etc - all are OK, just make sure the seller is someone you trust) and buy the case separately and put them together. It's really very easy to do and often doesn't even require a screwdriver.

That way, if the power supply fails, you'll know how to crack the case and get another drive.

I didn't know you could buy them separate like that, unless your talking about something like a server?

[Ken Gracey]

Nope, most stores will sell you any drive capacity you like, plus a suitable case with a decent power supply to run it.





TL

[Anthony Caruana]

Anthony, I still haven't seen a review from you on Drobo?

Adam Turner reviewed it last year i think.

[Anthony Caruana]

Nope, most stores will sell you any drive capacity you like, plus a suitable case with a decent power supply to run it.

TL

To be honest, i don't even shop around anymore. I just go to MSY as they are almost always the cheapest. Just make sure you know what you want.

[CTeditor]

well thanks for all the help guys, my questions have been answered.
For now I've decided to go with the HD I was looking at, It's set up now and working well
only annoying thing, it's not bus powered but oh well as long as it does its job.
Thanks a lot

[quietguy]

Thanks for the response Anthony, I am aware that the drive can be reformatted for mac, but can I format it to work on both mac and PC.
Why do you say its not recommended, what would you recommend?

You have a couple of options - either format it in NTSC which windows loves and the Mac can read, but needs and little application to help it write to that format, or

format it in FAT 32 which suits both but has a limit of a 4gig max file size

either way is easypeasy, as is everything Mac

I format my external HDs and thumb drives in FAT 32, except for those exclusive to the Mac such as my Mac backup drives

[CTeditor]

What is the app? Does it work well?

[bitingmidge]

Disk Utility.

You'll find it by looking in your Applications Folder. Applications>Utilities>Disk Utility

And yes it works very well indeed.

Cheers,

P

[Ben_]

CTeditor, on 28 May 2010 - 02:53 PM, said:

What is the app? Does it work well?

There are a few options. There is a free NTFS driver called NTFS-3G that lets you write to NTFS drives. I started a post asking about NTFS write support. See here.

I haven't got around to trying it yet but I hear it is pretty good.

As mentioned, FAT32 has some limitations, like the maximum 4 GB file size limit as well as the fact that FAT32 doesn't support file permissions. NTFS is also a more reliable file system, FAT32 is considered to be more prone to disk errors.

Then again, given that the NTFS driver mentioned above is from a third party, it may not be as reliable as the FAT32 driver in Mac OS X. So there are arguments both ways.

I have a few FAT32 formatted drives that have been fine so far. But I am considering converting them to NTFS.

[JamieD]

I've been using NTFS-3G for some time now and have not had a single issue with it.

[kim jong il]

Anthony Caruana, on 04 May 2010 - 04:03 PM, said:

The "Formatted for Mac" thing is really just marketing spin. You can buy the $95 drive (not a recommendation by the way), connect it and then go in Disk Utility, erase the drive and reformat it as a Mac drive.

There's no actual difference to the physical drives.

Anthony

I know this is an old thread but Anthony's non- recommendation of the $95 drives is well founded IMO. I have two of the things and, while they are generally quiet, I have doubts about their reliability. The operating temperature range is 5-35 degrees C, which in my mind is disgraceful. Moreover one of them makes disturbing clunks periodically. I think they are rubbish.

[Ben_]

Is the drive that makes the clunks a Western Digital external drive? I put a 1 TB WD green drive in my iMac when the old one died and I have found that it makes the odd clunking noise, particularly when it is spinning up. I know that the green drives are often used in WD external hard drives these days.

Incidentally, I wouldn't recommend putting one of these drives in as a primary hard drive. I got it from a PC shop. It was the only 1 TB drive they had in stock and the guy told me they were great and that he had one in his computer. I wanted a WD black or blue drive. When I asked him whether he noticed that the drive was slower (they run at 5400 rpm), he gave me this whole story that the vary their speed between 5400 and 7200 rpm, depending on how heavily it is being written to etc. I have since learned that this is a myth and that the run at a constant speed of 5400 rpm.

Anyway, most of the time I don't notice it, but it is a little slower booting up and it feels a bit slower when doing multiple read/write operations at once.

So, the moral of the story, trust your instincts and don't listen to the guy at the computer shop!

[CTeditor]

Yeah this drive does clunk a bit, but it doesn't bother me too much, even the one in my imac occasionally clunks. Once or twice it made a noise so loud I thought the whole thing was going to fall apart, but nothing went wrong so I still have no idea what that was.

According to my last post it's been over 3 months since I bought it and I've had no problems yet, I don't know about the operating temperature but I can't imagine my room being hotter than 35 or especially colder than 5.

I will check out that NTFS drive if I ever need to put large files on there, thanks for that Ben_, so far I've been able to work around the FAT32 format.
I wouldn't listen to the guy at the computer store either, that's what this place is for