External drive for Mac - need help choosing!

[Horitexan]

I posted this in the photography section by accident. This is a more appropriate section. Sure could use some advice.

I'm in need of a new external hard drive - primarily for backing up computers and lessening the amount of data on my laptop, to improve performance. But, I'd like a drive that I could use for editing video as well. I know that it would be ideal to have one drive for backups and another drive dedicated to video editing, but I just don't want to spend the money on two of them right now. I'm looking for something that'll work for both, for the time being.



I want to stay under $400 (as far as I can, lol!) and I want a minimum of 3TB of storage. It has to have a USB port for the ONE PC in the house and I'm pretty well set on a Firewire 800 port. I know Thunderbolt is faster but I'm going to wait until I get a dedicated video drive to go with a Thunderbolt drive; because all of our computers have Firewire 800 ports but only mine has a Thunderbolt. I sure wish they offered drives with BOTH FireWire 800 AND Thunderbolt!



Any suggestions?



Here are a few I'm looking at already:



G-Tech 4TB G-Drive 7200 RPM



LaCie 3TB D2 Quadra



G-Tech G-Drive Pro 4TB

I'm open to other suggestions. These 3 are just ones I've found already, that might work.

[DPElite]

Nick i use a WD i believe on my Imac its a 2TB and works like a champ storing all of my footage.

[Horitexan]

How does it work for editing (the footage that's on it) and what connection are you using? What model? I'd like to be able to work on files, even if they're on the external drive, without compromising a ton of performance. The WDs I've had have all used USB 2.0 and that's too slow for video editing, for me. Lol!

I need more space than 2Tb, though, because I'm going to use it as a storage device for several machines we've got, as well as for storing footage and working on it.

[DPElite]

All I know is that my iMac I use iMovie for my editing of my footage recognizes the external HardDrive and I select the footage I want to use

The external uses a USB cord and I have no speed issues at all

[Horitexan]

All I know is that my iMac I use iMovie for my editing of my footage recognizes the external HardDrive and I select the footage I want to use

The external uses a USB cord and I have no speed issues at all

K. Thanks man!

[Gummi Bear]

I like to carry data back and forth.

I have a couple of drives that are NTFS formatted, and I bought an app that runs in the background on my Macbook so I can read/write to it (Paragon NTFS).

I have another that is just for backing up my machine. It is in the native format.

All are connected with USB cable through a powered USB hub, and I have no issue reading/writing files to any of them. I am not editing video however, so not sure if that would be noticeable performance wise.

[TUCO]

Get two of the 3TB LaCie drives and dedicate one as a backup.

That is cheap insurance at a little over $200.

I have 5 - 1TB drives

Backup can't be stressed enough.

There is one thing you can count on when it comes to external hard drives......They Will Fail!

Buy just enough memory for what you think you will need in the next year. Memory just keeps going down in price.

SSD's are the way to go as far as external storage is concerned.

They are rugged, dependable, portable, & have no moving parts.

Unfortunately, since it is somewhat new as far as external storage is concerned; the cost per GB is very expensive.

[Horitexan]

Get two of the 3TB LaCie drives and dedicate one as a backup.

That is cheap insurance at a little over $200.

I have 5 - 1TB drives

Backup can't be stressed enough.

There is one thing you can count on when it comes to external hard drives......They Will Fail!

Buy just enough memory for what you think you will need in the next year. Memory just keeps going down in price.

SSD's are the way to go as far as external storage is concerned.

They are rugged, dependable, portable, & have no moving parts.

Unfortunately, since it is somewhat new as far as external storage is concerned; the cost per GB is very expensive.

Good advice. I like the G-tech stuff but the LaCie seems a better value. Since this is more for backup, I think I'll go with that 3TB LaCie and, later, get a G-Tech for storing video I really want to work with - maybe a Raid 0 G-Tech.

I read that the SSD have limits on the amount of re-writes they can take. While I like the stability of the SSD, if I can only write to it so-many times, I'd rather double up on backups and keep working with fast drives and fast connections.

Thanks TUCO!