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Thread: HELP with choosing an external hard drive Mac and PC

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    Default HELP with choosing an external hard drive Mac and PC

    For those of you that have a PC(Windows 2000) and MAC OS x 10.5, what would you recommend for an external hard drive? I currently use my PC laptop in the field or on vacation and then want to copy, store and exchange to my IMAC. I bought a LaCie XL and my head is spinning in terms of formating and this and that and ...... P
    lease help. Thanks, Ann

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    Your LaCie XL comes with software to install, but your computers may Recognize it simply by plugging it in. Hopefully you've got Firewire 800 on both your PC and Mac. If not, you probably want to invest in a Firewire 800 card for the PC. Your Mac should come with Firewire. USB is incredibly slow and not suitable for storing and moving more than a few MB. If you've got GB, then you'll be pleased to use Firewire.

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    I recommend getting USB3 drives, and if needed, cards for you computers to interface the two. USB 3 is faster than firewire.

    Regarding format, for PCs you are stuck with NTFS for any large sized drive. Macs read NTFS but can they write to it? Ubuntu linux reads and writes NTFS just fine. I've also found the fastest transfer speeds with usb on ubuntu linux (not that that helps in your case).

    This thread should be moved to digital workflow.

    Roger

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    Rog, will her Mac support USB 3.0? I thought that Apple was still up in the air about supporting the standard. Also, I don't think Ann's LaCie will support anything faster than Firewire 800. Also, I think that on her PC she's going to need to upgrade to Vista or 7 to use USB 3.0.

    Ann, hopefully you've got a geek friend that can help you a little. I suspect that you're very confused at this point. Most LaCie drives will interconnect with USB 2.0, Firewire 400 and Firewire 800. You probably have USB 2.0 on all your computers, BUT it's incredibly slow and clunky and can take forever to transfer GBs of image files. If you've only got a few hundred MB, then that'll probably do you for now. However, if, like many of us, you now have many GB of files, then you'll want to explore higher speed alternatives.

    BTW, your PC is getting long in the tooth. You probably need to decide if you're a Mac or a PC and go with one or the other. The imaging software today really works best with the latest operating systems, so you might want to upgrade to the latest version of the system that you prefer, if you're getting serious about imaging. Your external drive is a nice step forward.

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    Default Macbook/IMac

    Guys, Thanks for all so far, now.... I agree that choosing Mac or PC will make my life easier. I will move to Mac. I have a macbook that I (duh) have lent to a friend, but now I'll ask for it back and wipe it clean. (I have a business that has expensive PC software and that is the reason I have been using the PC notebook ( I run windows 7 and I-mac is 10.6.6, 24").
    So, Back to the drawing board. My question now is what do I get for backup and transfer for Mac? They will both run Snow Leopard, the IMAc has firewire 800 and the macbook has 400. guess an adapter would help for 400/800.
    And yes, I am very confused!
    I am serious about imaging, just bought Photoshop CS5 and LightRoom last month and now I would like to "perfect" a system for storage and transfer, etc, ... Also, I have downloaded PhotoMechanic trial as a reader and I really like it. Any other thoughts for me, it all is very helpful and appreciated.

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    Ann,
    If you are all macs, then you can buy mac-formatted USB/Firewire drives for backup.

    Roger

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    Oh, you said Windows 2000. With Windows 7 you CAN do the USB 3.0 thing.

    Of course, now that we see that you're going the Apple route, then Firewire is the path of least resistance. My LaCie drives will do either Firewire 400 or 800. Either is plenty fast for daily transfers and decent for large backups, like several hundred GB. There'll be faster alternatives in the future, but you'll probably be happy with either Firewire standard. The connectors are different for 400 and 800. it looks like you'll need one of each because of the variety of your equipment.

    You really need to think about duplicate backup, but consider that a "next step". I keep a 2TB LaCie at home and another at work. After knowing that I should do it for a year or two, I finally actually got it done a few months back. I keep my RAW files and my processed files and sync up monthly, if not more often. I also keep a ton of jpegs out on Flickr, but those could go away at the whim of Yahoo any day.

    Have you tried simply connecting your LaCie to your Mac? I suspect that the Mac will recognize the HD without installing any software. If it's not recognized, then install the software that came with your HD. Let us know how that goes.

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