for me i'll just clone it. all external HDDs will work, juz make sure u format correctly 1st. u dun need to get the "for Mac" ones cuz some shops markup very high. but if u can get an external that has a Firewire 800 port that would be great (if ure mac has the fw800 port lah ofcourse). faster transfer speeds.

this suggestion is a bit more difficult but can do la if u try. clone ur system to a 2.5" external HDD, then swap this hdd with ur internal hdd. then juz send only ur hdd not the whole mac.

u dont need to format it, juz that some naughty technician might snoop around ur files etc. you can do a zero-out data maybe 2 or 3 times. 7-pass would be better, but it'll take much longer.

wow dude...so hard to do a little bit of research? yes late 08 MBP got firewire800. even the older ones also got. but for this question ok la, maybe u just dunno where to search info about older MBP models, since the official page is only about the latest model. BUT.....

about the mybook, just look at the freaking box. if got firewire 800, it'll say on the box. if no, then no. when u buy a pack of m&ms, u need to ask at a forum which colour got peanuts?

This post has been edited by dvlzplayground: Mar 13 2010, 04:26 PM

never heard of freecom, but after googling, their products seems interesting. the germans make good stuff but then it seems like freecom is using another company's hdd inside their casing. meaning the actual hard drive isnt made by them.

compared to WD or seagate, who actually make hdds. i'd trust them more lah but that's just me

y dun u compare with the USB-only WDs? firewire support is pricey

oh. RM330 isnt really cheap... 500gb usb-only ext hdd now around rm300-rm320 according to czone pricelist. but then depends on ur location lah. for sarawak, rm330 is cheap. heheh

but firewire is pretty nice though before i was using USB for my time machine backup..now using firewire 800... woohoo big difference haha. but then maybe improve cuz that was from 10.5 to 10.6 lah

uhm wut i know is we cant write files bigger than 4gb on FAT32 drives. if 8gb i dunno :S

however maybe an app called Split and Concat can help u. it's like HJ Split in windows if u've used one

^ true2. i never see where is that 480 MB/s

im not sure what's the format out of the box. as long as u format it to fat32 right out of the box (before copying ur stuff ofcoz), u'll be fine. actually the "for mac" part doesnt mean anything

1) yeap
2) 1.5x or 2x the size of ur internal HDD is good enough.
3) mac also can do those cloning etc...but the drawback is this stuff got so many process. TM is practically invisible, as long as the hdd is plugged in, OSX will handle everything 4 u. that's why it's the best backup solution

---

Added on April 14, 2010, 2:08 pmanyway, TM will create a folder on the external drive for time machine. u can still use the drive to store other files too, juz dun disturb the time machine folder

This post has been edited by dvlzplayground: Apr 14 2010, 02:08 PM

no lah. u wanna use a smaller hdd also can it juz makes bttr sense to use a huge one

1st it will kinda clone ur hdd...everything will be copied (unless u exclude some folders), so if u got 200gb of stuff, then the TM will be around 200gb too. after that it will 'update' with new files and so on. it will make a 'screenshot' of ur system every time u backup, so u can revert to any one of them.

once the TM drive is full, it will start to delete the screenshots from the oldest one. so the bigger the drive, the further you can time travel

time machine keeps:
- hourly backups for the past 24 hours
- daily backups for the past month
- weekly backups for all previous months

the oldest backups are deleted when your disk becomes full

^ that's what written on the TM syspref so yeah for the hourly backups u need to keep it plugged in all the time. but for me i juz plug in my TM whenever i want to backup. once done, eject the disk

good question when restoring from the time machine (after a system crash or something), u can pick which date to restore from.

but yea if the hdd is full it will be deleted :S u can create a fresh-install-with-apps system clone, but i dunno what's the easiest way to restore from it unless another HDD is used. sorry about this

i never done this before, but i dont think the PC can read it. cuz windows cant understand HFS no matter where it's connected

ah yes, the TM drive need to be HFS. i think got windows software to read HFS drives. i think laaa

any HDD can have different format

it really depends on what the external HDD is formatted right out of the box. sometimes it's FAT32, in this case you can straight away copy ur files into it. the limitation of FAT32 is u can't store a single file larger than 4GB

sometimes they are formatted as NTFS. no prob with windows, but OSX can only read from NTFS, cannot write. meaning u can copy files from it, but not to it. in this case, u either need to format the drive to FAT32 first, or install an app in OSX to enable writing on NTFS

about those "for Mac" external drives, they're formatted as HFS. no prob on OSX, but windows cant do anything with it at all. so if u plan on sharing an external HDD with a PC, dont use HFS. however, HFS is the format required for OSX installation and Time Machine backups

juz plug in to ur mac 1st, right click on the HDD icon n go to Get Info... u can find out the format there

yea HFS format cannot use on windows. so if u buy the 'for Mac' HDD, need to reformat 1st if u want to use with windows

so u wanna buy any external HDD also can, all of them will work. the difference is just the format, which is easy to take care of

if it's just storage for ur files, then format as FAT32. simplest solution. both OSX n windows can access

if for storage but u wanna store files which are bigger than 4gb (as in 1 file >4gb, folder nevermind), use NTFS. windows can access but OSX cannot write. so u need to install an app on OSX to enable writing to NTFS volumes first..i recommend the free ntfs-3g

if for storage and time machine, only way is to partition the drive. one partition, format as HFS so can use with time machine. the other partition, format to either FAT32 or NTFS, depending on the previous paragraphs

good2 glad to help

so far i havent encountered any downsides with ntfs-3g

the post right above yours got clue

i only got two files bigger than 4gb. one is snowleopard disk image. another is my virtual machine

the only HD movies i have is rent from itunes... 24 hours expire dy...heheh