Now that your portable Firewire drive will be functioning as a “working” media drive, you will want to make sure you have a copy of projects/content that live on that drive as well as whatever valuable user data may be stored on your internal Macintosh HD.
Your Archive Drive will act as a massive storage unit that will only really be accessed when you are performing backups or restoring data back onto your machine. So with that in mind, this HD will not have to perform at optimal speeds (5400 RPM, USB 2.0 will suffice) nor will it have to be a pricey workhorse. But, you will want to make sure that it is built well enough to be reliable when you need it, particularly if you are using it to warehouse/archive past projects or files that don’t live anywhere else.
The capacity of your backup HD should be equal to or greater than the combined size of your external FW HD and your internal Macintosh HD. As a general rule of thumb, you can never have enough HD space.
Many drives available on the market come with their own proprietary tools and backup software, however, we strongly recommend using Apple’s Disk Utility to reformat your external HD before using it with your Mac.
Archive Drive Recommendations:
Western Digital 2TB My Book Essential Desktop Hard Drive
Price: $129.00
Interface: USB 3.0, compatible with USB 2.0
Western Digital 3TB My Book Essential Desktop Hard Drive
Price: $159.00
Dual Interfaces: USB 3.0/USB 2.0
Higher End Archive Drive Recommendations:
G-Technology 2TB G-DRIVE External Hard Drive
Price: $198.00
Interfaces: eSATA, FireWire 800, USB 2.0
7200 RPM SATA II Drive
G-Technology 4 TB G-DRIVE Professional External Hard Drive
Price: $324.99
Interfaces: eSATA, FireWire 800, USB 2.0
7200 RPM SATA II Drive
