Should I worry about an external HDD?

[Joe91]

So while I've been saving for a MB I've been looking at what else I need to complete my school based setup in my bedroom. I will need to work out what wireless router to get, and I've been looking at external HDDs. Not cheap, 1TB drive is $300+. It only occurred to me last night that I could backup my files on my PC via USB.

I have 2x 250GB Seagate HDDs, one for the XP and programs, the other for games. I wanted a backup storage solution so I could create an image of the Mac and back it up weekly, as well as daily sync all my school work + music and movies.

Would this work?

[stewiesno1]

You would have to format one of these drives as HFS+ for the Mac to be able to read and write to it.
PCs use HDs formatted as FAT-32 or NTFS . You could simply have the two computers networked together and backup your Mac that way or manually transfer files by USB stick.

Stewie

[cosmichobo]

Macs can read and write to Fat32...

[stewiesno1]

Sorry. My bad . I'm aware Macs can read and write to Fat 32 ( 4Gb limit ) but in this instance where Joe91 mentions movies and music ( big files ) I thought it would probably not be the best way to go.

Stewie

[Tiprya]

Originally Posted by cosmichobo

Macs can read and write to Fat32...

And they can write to a NTFS drive on a network....

[Brains]

Time Machine (10.5's built-in backup software) won't work with network volumes unless it is a Time Capsule or a Mac running Mac OS X Server 10.5.2 or greater. It can be made to work with an Airport Extreme Base Station via its AirDisk feature but is untrustworthy and unsupported.

The budget-minded solution is to obtain a medium-capacity 2.5" hard drive and USB-based external enclosure (something like a Seagate FreeAgent, or build one yourself) and use that to clone your working install to with Carbon Copy Cloner or as a basic Time Machine volume, and you can keep your large data files stored on your PC or other network storage device.

[stewiesno1]

Yes , even though I have a couple of desktops with added on HDs , I must say the best thing I have bought in the last couple of years is an external Firewire/USB2.0 drive with a 300Gb Hd inside for all my backups from here on these forums. I don't have any music or videos on it so apart from work backups and family photos, I have only filled up about 30Gb so far.

Stewie

[jrad]

I'd format your externals as HFS+ for full compatibility with your new mac and then also run "MacDrive" on your PC to be able access and write to your mac enabled external hdds on your PC.