<p>First let it be clear I know very little about computers. So simple advice is needed!
My son had his Macbook taken from his on campus apartment. He had his current work saved on a flash drive. He lost all his music, many of his photos and quite a few projects from last year. He was able to retrieve several projects from his professors along with some photos. (he is a studio art major with a concentration in Graphic design).
He does most of his work in the Art department using their computers. He transports the work from home to school via flash drive. We are going to replace the mac but my son has asked if we would buy him an external hard drive.
I have looked online and at Amazon and Costco. I have no clue as to what to buy. Do they all work for a Mac? I don’t want to spend a lot of money. Costco has a My Passport with 320g for $79, they also have a small Hitachi for the same price. Or a Seagate that is 500gb for $70 that is a bit larger in size.
At my office they do a backup each afternoon and I have nothing to do with it. I just know that if their is a problem they have a backup. I don’t have much on my laptop at home. I have copied all my photos to CD’s in case my computer dies.
Suggestions?</p>
<p>I think almost all new external hard drives out there today should be compatible with Mac OS X.</p>
<p>I’d recommend searching through Newegg if you want to buy an external hard drive. I’ve bought from them several times over the last three years, and they’ve never disappointed with their prices and how fast they pack your order out for delivery.</p>
<p>If you’re willing to pay a little more, [take</a> a look at this one](<a href=“Computer Parts, PC Components, Laptop Computers, LED LCD TV, Digital Cameras and more - Newegg.com”>Fantom Drives G-Force II 1TB USB 2.0 / eSATA 3.5" External Hard Drive with NTI Shadow 4 Backup Software - Newegg.com). Fantom has a good reputation for external hard drives, and if your son is a studio art major, the more space, the merrier.</p>
<p>Full disclosure: I don’t own a Fantom drive. I actually assembled my own; I bought an Eagle enclosure and a Western Digital internal hard drive and pieced the two together. I’ve had it since Spring 2008, and it’s worked marvelously. <em>Knock on wood</em></p>
<p>New MacBooks come with Time Machine which is a backup program. It’s very easy to use, the backups are quick and you can restore your MacBook to exactly what it was like on a given day. I set Time Machine so I get a reminder every 10 days to back up my computer. It usually takes only 5-10 minutes to back up.</p>
<p>I would suggest getting the biggest external hard drive you can afford. I think I got a 1T (that’s 1,000 GB) hard drive on sale at Target for $99 a few months back. I think Best Buy also had them for around that price. I have several from Western Digital and have not had any problems in the 1-1/2 years I’ve owned them.</p>
<p>One suggestion is that he won’t want to leave his MacBook hooked up to his external hard drive when he leaves it in his dorm room; thieves would probably just grab both.</p>
<p>Just checked Best Buy; they have the 1T Western Digital for $88.</p>
<p>DS’s mac is backed up with external and internet and flash. His machine is mission critical but not all that confidential. Memory is cheap. Machines are cheap. But WORK is irreplaceable.</p>
<p>Based on Toneranger’s recommendation (here on CC), I bought a ClickFree and use it ever week to back stuff up. But I have a PC. It’s the simplest thing in the world – you just attach it, and it does all the rest.</p>
<p>I use an Iomega Prestige 1T to backup my iMac using Time Machine. Under $100 from Amazon. Had a cheaper one (forget the brand) that was really noisy and died in less than a year. S backed up his Macbook to the Iomega drive before he left this fall and now uses MozyHome Free backup for projects & documents. It was pretty easy to set up. You get 2 GB of space for free which is enough for him because he’s pretty much just keeping papers and small ppt. projects. I like the idea of keeping critical work in progress off site. If the laptop gets stolen, the external drive is likely to get nabbed too.</p>
<p>I just bought an external Hitachi 1TB (1 tera-byte or 1000 gigabytes or 1,000,000 megabytes or 1,000,000,000,000 bytes!!). Hitachi is one of the largest of the small handful of companies that actually manufacture hard disk drives. Some of the external hard drive providers don’t actually make the hard drive inside the enclosure. This external drive specifically states that it supports Mac as well as Windows (I’m using it with Windows). Not all external drives of the same capacity are the same when it comes to operating characteristics - some are faster than others (faster RPM, more cache, etc.). The Hitachi is a pretty good one. It’s very simple to connect and use, at least on Windows.</p>
<p>One problem with the external drive is that if it’s left adjacent to the computer and the computer gets stolen then the external drive would likely get stolen as well so it’s important to do the backup at reasonable times and then put the external elsewhere - preferably offsite or in a fire-safe. He should remember that if he transfers things off of his normal drive to the external so it’s now ‘just’ on the external, he put himself back in the position of no backup.</p>
<p>Here’s the Hitachi - [Amazon.com:</a> Hitachi 1TB USB External Hard Drive: Electronics](<a href=“http://www.amazon.com/Hitachi-1TB-External-Hard-Drive/dp/B00104F28A/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1256778386&sr=8-2]Amazon.com:”>http://www.amazon.com/Hitachi-1TB-External-Hard-Drive/dp/B00104F28A/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1256778386&sr=8-2)</p>
<p>You can also have him sign up for offsite backup via the internet where his data routinely gets backed up on some company’s equipment elsewhere. There’s usually a monthly fee for this service.</p>
<p>I use a 1 TB WD Green drive (spins at variable speeds to save power) for backing up my MacBook Pro. I generally just backup the whole Mac OS X partition. This drive has a Firewire connector so that I can boot off the external drive on my computer or any other Mac computer with a Firewire connector. I think that the older MacBooks didn’t have the Firewire connector and maybe some of the current models don’t. The ability to boot off of a Firewire drive means that you can just borrow another Mac and have access to your files and applications in the short-term while working on a longer-term solution.</p>
<p>I believe that Mac OS X doesn’t like NTFS-formatted disks. Look for an indication that the drive is compatible with Mac OS X.</p>
<p>Why are his songs lost? If he purchased them off a downloading service, then he should be able to redownload them. If he ripped his own CDs, he could re-rip them though it could take quite a while.</p>
<p>Our son generally backs up his projects online. He emails the project files to himself or uploads them to our website in a private area. This provides for backup and allows him to run his application on other computers. This approach also provides multiple backups so that he can go to a particular revision. He doesn’t otherwise backup his system.</p>
<p>For home photos, I generally keep them all on one machine and then push them out to other computers in the house including our laptops. This means that we have multiple copies of them in multiple places. They would be too large to backup online and the database changes fairly frequently so that I’d prefer not to have a static backup. CDs and DVDs do have a limited lifespan too.</p>
<p>There are 3.5 inch and 2.5 inch external drives. There are one-inch drives too but they wouldn’t suit your purpose here. THe 3.5 inch drives require external outlet power and they are moderately big and heavy. They generally perform better and provide more capacity than 2.5 inch drives. The 2.5 inch drives are much smaller and are designed for portability. They can often be powered by two USB ports from a laptop or desktop but not always. Those that require additional power typically come with their own transformer for wall outlet power.</p>
<p>Always be careful when disconnecting an external drive (hard disk or flash). Shut down the drive - don’t just pull the plug out or turn it off. I’ve lost a few drives doing this in the past.</p>