Where To Buy Reasonably Priced Portable Hard Drive For Mac In Bangkok

[orchidlady]

I had a computer problem for two weeks computer wouldn't boot. Finally booted after trying numerous procedures( updating permissions fixed the problem I think). To avoid a repeat or HD crash, I need to get a portable hard drive for my mac powerbook- firewire and usb 2.0 as soon as possible-by this weekend hopefully?

Any suggestions where to buy in person in Bangkok? and what drive to buy? the easiest set up is preferable (my dream- a model pre-formatted for mac) it seems many stores haven't been able to re-stock after the floods.

I have been calling mac sellers in fortune town and everyone has told me they are on order. I studio has Lacie in stock but they are 7800 baht for 500Gb. I don't really need that level of protection. The drive will mostly be used as back up...i.e., not carried outside the house.

[msg362]

Why not just buy a normal 1TB/500 Gb USB 2.0 portable hard drive and then format it in 'Disk Utility' as a Mac format? I've done that with several portable dirves. You can format them back to FAT if you want and just keep going back and forth. Nothing special

Edited June 15, 2012 by msg362

[orchidlady]

I suppose I could buy a regular drive but all the articles I've been reading about drives recommend using a drive with firewire (which is specific to macs) for faster speed (and to avoid having to use your usb drive to power the drive. I know very little about external drives thus I am asking for recommendations.

[JusMe]

One of the problems with Firewire is that the newer Macs don't support it. You'd need an adapter for the Firewire cable to connect to their Thunderbolt plug.

Like MSG, I'd recommend a standard external drive that you format for the Mac. Carbon Copy Cloner is a fabulous backup application - free, and makes a perfect copy of your internal drive so you have everything, including prefs and registrations and files, etc. You can even boot from that clone as it's a perfect match of your internal drive.

USB makes it a bit slower, but not such a big problem. I use an external cloned drive when I travel back and forth between my house in Thailand and my place in Canada, ensuring that my iMacs are pure copies of each other.

[partington]

I'd go to Fortune Town complex right next to Param 9 MRT station. I used a store called 109 on the 3rd floor, but there are many..

I bought a Western Digital Scorpio 320GB 7200rpm notebook hard disk for 1790B (though this was before the floods put the prices up), and a hard drive container box for 300B--its a USB connection but I've not found speed a big problem.

I used carbon copy cloner (free) to make an identical copy of my hard disc and do this regularly to update. It is fully bootable from this copy /back up disk so when (not if!) my hard drive fails I will be able to use my Mac with no delay and no loss of data. I can also just open up my Mac and put this disc right in to replace the failed one as it's completely compatible.

Some of the pre-packaged pre-formatted external HDs will apparently not allow you to boot up from them , so if you go this route you might end up with all your data saved but a computer that is unusable until you replace the hard disk.

[nikster]

Why not just buy a normal 1TB/500 Gb USB 2.0 portable hard drive and then format it in 'Disk Utility' as a Mac format? I've done that with several portable dirves. You can format them back to FAT if you want and just keep going back and forth. Nothing special

Yep. Easy. Buy any off the shelf portable HDD - I like WD, but any other brand should do . Steer clear of external "box" things where you have to install your own HDD- it's not with the hassle and some of these are really low quality and break.

Fire up Disk Utility and format it for Mac.

Forget about Firewire, it's dead. It's only marginally faster than USB 2.0 if you have a good USB drive. It could be much faster but the thing is you'll hit system limitations very quickly, and then your HDD or external HDD will be the bottleneck. USB 2 can get up to 30MB/s real life transfer rate, in my experience external portable drives will go up to 40MB/s with FireWire. It's hardly worth it.