Pete
30-Apr-2007, 22:54
I'm looking for an external HD for occasional (maybe weekly) full backups or clones. The simpler the method, the better. Intuition and brief research points to SuperDuper to clone to a 2.5" USB2 external drive (which can be booted from (http://www.tuaw.com/2006/02/08/intel-macs-can-boot-from-usb-drives/)). My questions:
1) Firewire or USB2? I'm guessing throughput (for a full clone) is roughly the same with both?
2) 3.5" or 2.5"? Do newer external HDs shut off after a certain time, or do they spin all the time? I'm guessing 2.5" HDs power down automatically and will be more reliable. Wrong?
3) Brand? Seagate, WD, SimpleTech, LaCie?
4) Is all the "one-touch" backup software included with external HDs smart enough to clone a 250GB HD with only 40GB of data onto a 160GB destination HD?
5) Can I partition the external drive to house simultaneously both a clone and incremental backup (again, only 40GB of data currently, don't expect more than 60GB, so even a 120GB HD seems like it should be able to handle this, size-wise)? What software will let me do this?
1) Firewire or USB2? I'm guessing throughput (for a full clone) is roughly the same with both?
2) 3.5" or 2.5"? Do newer external HDs shut off after a certain time, or do they spin all the time? I'm guessing 2.5" HDs power down automatically and will be more reliable. Wrong?
3) Brand? Seagate, WD, SimpleTech, LaCie?
4) Is all the "one-touch" backup software included with external HDs smart enough to clone a 250GB HD with only 40GB of data onto a 160GB destination HD?
5) Can I partition the external drive to house simultaneously both a clone and incremental backup (again, only 40GB of data currently, don't expect more than 60GB, so even a 120GB HD seems like it should be able to handle this, size-wise)? What software will let me do this?