abpowell
asked on
External Hard Drive for Mac - Build or Buy
Moving out of my old PC and into my new iMac. I've got a couple of existing hard drives I "think" will be compatible that I can store all the data I want to keep. That would leave me with a few pretty nice hard drives. Two are WD Raptors. Not that large, but at 10,000 rpm faster than any external I've found. Now to my question,....For video editing purposes, could I use the two WD Raptors (one is 40Gb the other 150Gb? don't know if size difference matters), in a dual enclosure, set them in a Raid 2 similar to this http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822205005 I know I would need some serious fans and it doesn't give me much capacity. Really thinking of it more like my workspace. Would store renedered videos on a larger hd.
1. Is this even worth trying?
2. What is the most limiting factor affecting the speed in the setup? Would 1394a or 1394b make any difference or will it still come down to the speed of the HDD.? (just an fyi I'm running 4GB RAM, 2.66GHz cpu and editing app is running on internal HDD
Then part two for my other other HDDs - can I just wipe them and reformat to FAT32 (instead of current NTFS).
3. Am I correct that I'd need to use FAT32 when writing from OSX. Or do I need a totally different format?
4. If I got a new external, what specfications do I need to look for it to be Mac compatible?
Sorry for the spray of questions but hopefully you see where I'm headed with this. I went back and numbered them so it would be a little easier to respond
Thanks
1. Is this even worth trying?
2. What is the most limiting factor affecting the speed in the setup? Would 1394a or 1394b make any difference or will it still come down to the speed of the HDD.? (just an fyi I'm running 4GB RAM, 2.66GHz cpu and editing app is running on internal HDD
Then part two for my other other HDDs - can I just wipe them and reformat to FAT32 (instead of current NTFS).
3. Am I correct that I'd need to use FAT32 when writing from OSX. Or do I need a totally different format?
4. If I got a new external, what specfications do I need to look for it to be Mac compatible?
Sorry for the spray of questions but hopefully you see where I'm headed with this. I went back and numbered them so it would be a little easier to respond
Thanks
SOLUTION
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Oh, and most enclosures with firewire should support both mac and PC fine, but if you look on newegg it's usually spelled out in the listing (look under external drives/enclosures, NOT through "mac" anything).
(sorry, should be spelled out in the listing everywhere - not endorsing newegg, it's just the place he linked to)
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ASKER
"a card for the mac to support it" Sorry one last follow up to this.....I've only got the 20" iMac. There is no card I can use for that is there?
I don't see any ports, but again, this is my first Mac and I am embarrassed to say I couldn't find the on button when I first hooked it up. My 7 year had to show me. Of course he has access to one at school but still, it's taking a while for this PC to convert to a Mac.
I don't see any ports, but again, this is my first Mac and I am embarrassed to say I couldn't find the on button when I first hooked it up. My 7 year had to show me. Of course he has access to one at school but still, it's taking a while for this PC to convert to a Mac.
Yeah, I had trouble finding the power button on one of the ones at my sons' school. Only been working on computers professionally for 20+ years. :)
Is this your imac?
http://store.apple.com/Catalog/regional/amr/imac/img/gallery-big-03.jpg
If so, no, you can't put a card in there - the ports listed in the picture are what you get.
The interface with the drive is still a question of whether you need to edit the files directly from the external drive, or can edit them on the internal drive and just use the external for storage or backup once the editing is done.
If you're just going to be copying the files back and forth from the external drive, USB 2.0 is fine; if you want your files to live on there and be edited from there, both should work but firewire is recommended.
Hope that makes sense. :)
You should ALWAYS have backup of anything you care about, so if you do get an external that turns out not to work well enough to edit on, it will still be valuable to you. Trust me on the backup thing. Drives just die. Any drive.
Is this your imac?
http://store.apple.com/Catalog/regional/amr/imac/img/gallery-big-03.jpg
If so, no, you can't put a card in there - the ports listed in the picture are what you get.
The interface with the drive is still a question of whether you need to edit the files directly from the external drive, or can edit them on the internal drive and just use the external for storage or backup once the editing is done.
If you're just going to be copying the files back and forth from the external drive, USB 2.0 is fine; if you want your files to live on there and be edited from there, both should work but firewire is recommended.
Hope that makes sense. :)
You should ALWAYS have backup of anything you care about, so if you do get an external that turns out not to work well enough to edit on, it will still be valuable to you. Trust me on the backup thing. Drives just die. Any drive.