Re: Replacing Boot Drive

I recommend you do a google search on any external harddrive you are
looking at.

I bought a low cost external drive enclosure. When I started having
trouble with it, I did a google search and found a lot of complaints
about the drive enclosure. I ended up buying a new drive enclosure. On
my second go around, I decided to buy a drive enclosure with a good
history of working with Macs. The chip set seems to be the key
ingredient. The Oxford line of chips seems to be good. I got the
Oxford 911.

The latest the hard drive enclosures support the newer serial ata
drives. The drive and closure that I list supports only older parallel
ata.

Here is the external drive enclosure that I got "Other World
Computing: Mercury Elite Pro." This drive is a little dated from a
technology point of view, but it is the one I have. Web page:
<a href="http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other%20World%20Computing/
MEFW911UPL/"
Mercury Elite Pro</a> OWC Mercury Elite Pro FireWire / USB 2.0/1.1 Oxford911+ Enclosure Kit - Supports all 3.5" IDE/ATA Hard Drives. up to 750GB. All cables included. New, 1yr Warranty.

& Powers down the harddrive when not used for a given period of time.

I haven't had any problems. OWC didn't provide any documentation. They
do provide a 800 number and they were nice when I called. The
harddrive should be set to master.

Folks in these Mac forums recommend LaCie, OWC or G-Tech.
Here is a list of recommended drives:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=5564509#5564509

FireWire compared to USB
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Serial_Bus#USB_compared_to_FireWire
http://www23.tomshardware.com/storageexternal.html
--------------

I suggest you get an external firewire harddrive and clone your
startup disk.

Carbon Copy Cloner will copy your startup drive to an external
firewire drive. You can boot from the external drive to verify that
you have a good clone. When you upgrade your existing startup drive,
you can at any time boot from your external drive and go back to your
existing system.
http://www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html

SuperDuper is the wildly acclaimed program that makes recovery
painless, because it makes creating a fully bootable backup painless.
Its incredibly clear, friendly interface is understandable, easy to
use, and SuperDuper's built-in scheduler makes it trivial to back up
automatically. And it runs beautifully on both Intel and Power PC
Macs!

Give SuperDuper a workout on your own system. Clone to your heart's
content — for free. See what else is possible. When you're convinced
that SuperDuper is a terrific solution — and a great value at $27.95 —
you can register right from the application and start using its
advanced features immediately!

http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.html



To boot from the external drive, hold down the option key when you
poweron your system. Pick the drive you want.

Robert

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Replacing Boot Drive
    ... I bought a low cost external drive enclosure. ... Here is the external drive enclosure that I got "Other World ... Here is a list of recommended drives: ... I wanted to remove the disk and verify that it was okay. ...
    (comp.sys.mac.system)
  • Re: moving page file to USB 2.0 flashdrive?
    ... Most external USB drives use a Translation or Bridge chip ... Flash Drive USB devices have varying performance. ... Same USB2 drive enclosure using a generic USB2 cable ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.general)
  • Re: Backup Software rcommendation
    ... drive enclosure, since it's only powered on when you make the backup - so its ... that the surge from turning on the enclosure HD is worse than leaving it on all the time (in terms of life expectancy), which, I believe, is a debateable point. ... Or, to put it another way, does it really make much sense to keep your backup drive running all the time along with the main drive, given that the life expectancy of these drives is a few years? ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.general)
  • Re: Reading an NT 4.0 disk
    ... > hard drive that was previously in a Windows NT 4.0 machine that I just ... > up in the list of drives in My Computer. ... hardware problems to sort it. ... It could be the drive enclosure and/or any of ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.hardware)
  • Re: Recommended HD configuration for SQL2000
    ... > The real reason you are getting fragmentation at the file level is due to ... Then your files should be contiguous on disk and stay ... >> have the drives. ... >> I have what would you recommend? ...
    (microsoft.public.sqlserver.server)