[dirtbikephil]

I'm wanting to get another hard drive so that I can back up my entire system using CCC. That way if the hard drive in my G5 becomes messed up, I'd be able to use the cloned image stored on the backup. I would also like to store a cloned image of my iBook on the extra drive as well. That is all I'm really wanting to use the extra hard drive for - backup purposes.

What would you guys recommend? An internal or external hard drive for this purpose?

I've already searched the forums and couldn't quite find what I was looking for.

Thanks in advance.

[Luca Rescigno]

If you're using it with more than one computer, you're better off with an external drive. Internal drives are more useful if you're actually going to be USING the data on the hard drive. However, if you were to get an internal drive on the G5, you'd have to connect the iBook via Firewire target disk mode whenever you wanted to back up its hard drive.

I'd say get a hard drive that is big enough to hold complete backups of both drives, and then partition it so that one partition is the same size as the HD in the G5, and the other is the same size as the HD in the iBook. If the drive still has room left over, you can make a third partition for storing anything else you might want.

As for external hard drives, I'd suggest buying a case and a drive separately and putting them together yourself. The process takes two minutes and it'll save you a lot of money. Just go to NewEgg.com and look for an IDE hard drive and an external enclosure.

[SafariX]

For speed purposes, I would buy an additional internal S-ATA. You can use target disk mode to made an image of your iBook's HD to it.

[dirtbikephil]

The internal option sounds like the route I might take. I've already got a 6pin-to-6pin firewire cable. This way I'd also be able to save a little money.

Thanks for the help so far. I'd love to hear more opinions/advice before making my final decision though.

I'll just search the forum to find out how to make partitions.