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bmdbaseball
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Join Date: Feb 2005
 
2007-05-20, 21:35

Im looking at getting a new external hard drive for college. Ive been looking at getting the 500GB G-Grive Q. But I dont know it is is really portable external hard drive or not. Are there any portable exteral hard drives that are 500GB. I want to use it to backup my computer and store music and other media so i dont take up all my hard dive space on my macbook pro.
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Windowsrookie
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Join Date: Oct 2005
Location: Minnesota
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2007-05-20, 22:23

I'm, sure if you search there are some good threads about external drives. There was even one earlier today.
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brassguy
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Join Date: Jun 2006
 
2007-05-21, 03:07

Well basically every external drive is portable. Some more than others.

I personally use a Lacie 500 GB triple interface drive. I only use Firewire 400 but it is nice to know that i can use USB 2.0 and that other fire wire speed. I got it for really cheap restored on their website.
It is pretty large though and people comment that it is huge. Definitely portable though!
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bender0069
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Join Date: Feb 2007
 
2007-05-21, 07:50

I just bought a 500GB FreeAgent by Seagate from best buy. It was on sale for $130 and I had about a $100 return, so pretty sweet deal. So far it seems to be working well. Easy to install and reformat for my mac. Not very big, so it would be easily portable and has a 5 year limited warranty.

A quick question, I hear people all the time talking about storing music on there external drives, I thought the point was to have it as a back-up not the only place that the music is stored? I have my music on my computer and my external drive. Can you put iTunes strictly on your external hard drive so no music is stored on your computer?
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Perfecting_Zero
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Join Date: Sep 2006
 
2007-05-21, 10:21

Bender, take a look at this thread for an explanation of how to locate your iTunes library to an external FW HDD.
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bender0069
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Join Date: Feb 2007
 
2007-05-26, 12:00

Quote:
Originally Posted by Perfecting_Zero View Post
Bender, take a look at this thread for an explanation of how to locate your iTunes library to an external FW HDD.
Thanks, I tried it and it's working well. Now I just need to get some disc to make a hard back-up. Makes me feel better
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JohnnyTheA
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Feb 2005
 
2007-05-26, 13:44

One idea I have is buy two drives and mirror them (Raid 0?). HDs probably will last at least 3 years before one dies, and by that time a 500 GB will be super cheap. So whenever a drive breaks you just buy a new one. There is a small risk that both could die at the same time though. A lightning storm, or malicious net attack or something...

Backing up to DVD may have its problems. Depending on the disc maker, the drives will decay over time and you will have make copies of those in a few years to be sure you have everything. The DVD-Rs don't last nearly as long as normal Movie DVDs...

Another option would be not to back anything up and just buy all those CDs and DVDs you had when they go bad...

JTA
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