[Naplander]

I am moving jobs soon, and need to take about 30 gigs of data with me. Do any of you have experience with any of the portable external drives on the market?

I am quite keen on the Lacie 40 gig USB 2 drive. Anyone tried it?

Thanks

[Mithras]

The most lovely (and with pleasant side-effects) being an iPod, of course. Otherwise I'd suggest getting a case and drive separately, as it tends to be both cheaper and more flexible.

[Naplander]

Do you mean buying a full size IDE drive? I need to get the data off a powerbook HD and on to a PC laptop, so cross platform compatibility is important.

I do have an iPod, but it's one of the old 10gig ones, so too small...

[Xyphoid Process]

Originally posted by Naplander:
Do you mean buying a full size IDE drive? I need to get the data off a powerbook HD and on to a PC laptop, so cross platform compatibility is important.

I do have an iPod, but it's one of the old 10gig ones, so too small...

If you need a drive that's very portable, get a 2.5" external. Otherwise, you can save yourself a great deal of money by buying a regular 3.5" hard drive and a case. I just did that - paid C$100 for a 120gb drive and C$45 for a usb/fw case (about US$110 total). If you have USB2 on your mac you can save money by skipping the fw option. Takes about 5 minutes to install the drive in the case.

To make it cross-platform, first hook the drive up to the PC and format it as a FAT32 drive. Your Mac will be able to read/write fust fine - only downside is that you won't be able to boot from it.

Good luck!

[Naplander]

Thanks for the suggestion. The problem is however, slightly more complex.

I have two full size IDE drives at home (totaling about 50gig) which are HFS (mac formatted) with a load of data on. I took these drives out of my g4 tower when I sold it.

I now want to get all my data off this powerbook, and all my data off those drives and put them onto one external drive that will be fine cross platform (I will be working on windows, but plan to get another mac laptop soon)

If I do buy an external lacie drive and connect it to the powerbook, transfer data etc - will the pc see the data? Will I have to reformat the drive to FAT32 to work with the pc, or should I format it first to FAT32 and then connect to the mac?

I have one of those cases here at work, so should be able to get the data off the full size drives fine onto the powerbook.

Obviously I am concerned I may lose all this valuable data when I connect the drive to the pc .

Help?

[Xyphoid Process]

Originally posted by Naplander:


Obviously I am concerned I may lose all this valuable data when I connect the drive to the pc .

Help?

Not sure why you are still concerned:
1. Buy/assemble an external hard drive
2. Hook it up to your pc
3. Format it as FAT32
4. Hook it up to your mac
5. If you have an extra drive case, connect the old powermac drives as well (you can daisy-chain firewire devices)
6. Transfer the files

Your Mac doesn't care that it's FAT32, and your PC will be able to read everything. As long as you don't reformat your drive you won't lose any data

[Naplander]

Cool - thanks again.

I think I may have found a slightly different solution (as I will not have access to that PC until I have left here)

1.) Purchase said Lacie external portable HD (USB 2.0). I need the portability.
2.) Format it on a friends PC to FAT32 (is that compatible with XP?)
3.) Bring my drives in from home and use works IDE to Firewire case to tranfer data to my powerbook.
4.) Connect FAT32 formatted lacie to the powerbook and transfer all data across.
5.) Remove lacie and leave the premesis!

Cheers

[Mithras]

I'd just add that you might have to do the formatting on the Mac (use Disk Utility to format as FAT32), because recent versions of Windows refuse to format a disk bigger than around 37Gb as FAT32, for no good reason.

You can buy either a 3.5" or a 2.5", depending on whether you value size or portability more. Do get a case that has both Firewire and USB2, obviously.

Your spare drives that you want to copy data from do add a little more complexity, as you note. You'll need either a spare computer or a spare external case in order to copy the data directly from these drives onto your new disk.

If you don't want to buy a second external case, and don't mind doing a bit of a shuffle, you could simply plug one of your spare drives into the external case, copy the data a little bit at a time onto your Powerbook, then put the new drive in the case & copy that chunk of data over, etc., repeating as often as required.

[Naplander]

Thanks for the tips.

I think I wil go for the Lacie 2.5" external portable drive 80gig (prefer the form factor)

Why do you suggest getting both firewire and USB connections? I think I may just go for the USB 2.0 option as it keeps costs down, just wondering what other reason (apart from daisy chaining) there may be for getting both busses?

[Xyphoid Process]

Originally posted by Naplander:
Thanks for the tips.

I think I wil go for the Lacie 2.5" external portable drive 80gig (prefer the form factor)

Why do you suggest getting both firewire and USB connections? I think I may just go for the USB 2.0 option as it keeps costs down, just wondering what other reason (apart from daisy chaining) there may be for getting both busses?

One big reason is that older Macs don't have USB2, so Firewire is the only realistic option. Another is that Firewire gives faster sustained data transfer speeds even though it's listed as 400Mb/s vs USB2's 480. Finally, most people have lots of USB devices but not Firewire, so that keeps the bus free for just the drive. You really don't want to run anything else on the bus containing the hard drive (especially true for USB, since one 'slow' USB device can bring the whole bus down to USB 1.1 speeds).

In your case, if you have USB2 on both computers you could probably just save the money and stick with USB.