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  #1  
Old 02-07-2008, 08:06 AM
Tate Tate is offline
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"My Book - Home Edition" - Oxford? Recommendations?

Great to see such an active board and responsive moderators. I wish I had come here sooner (as you'll see in a moment.)

Excited to upgrade to Leopard I went out and bought a HD from Best Buy, a 500GB Western Digital My Book - Home Edition, as soon as I got the disk. It wasn't until last night I actually downloaded SuperDuper (my plan all along) to start the process of baking up my computer and found that this HD is not on the supported list.

After trolling through posts for a couple of hours I see that many seemed to have use the WD My Book Pro's, and Premiums with success, but the home edition is only mentioned when someone was having problems (not necessarily related.) It also seems that the key point is having an authentic Oxford chip.

I have a support request in to WD to try to find out if the Home uses Oxford, but I was wondering - does anyone know? Should I return this since I just bought it yesterday and get the Maxtor (the only recommended HD they carry at BB)? Should I return and get a LaCie somewhere else even though it's a lot more expensive? (This is a back-up after all and worth the money if it is that much better.)

Sorry I'm so new to all of this, but Thanks in advance.
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  #2  
Old 02-07-2008, 09:13 AM
Tate Tate is offline
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WD claims it IS OXFORD

I just called Western Digital support and the representative claimed that WD exclusively uses either Oxford 922 or 934 in their external hard drives.

Don't know how to know for sure, but that was the claim.
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  #3  
Old 02-07-2008, 10:03 AM
stokessd stokessd is offline
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I have a WD 750gig drive that I bought from SAMS. It's only got USB2, so I think it's the cheapest one and probably the same one oyu have. I've used 2.5 to back up to it with no problems. (leopard, SD 2.5) I backup to a sparse image, so I don't ever plan to boot from the drive.

The WD drive is the biggest piece of crap I've ever seen. the power adapter is the same quality you'd get with a $10 pair of speakers. The case is cheap plastic. It's really marginal from a build quality and feel standpoint.


Sheldon
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  #4  
Old 02-07-2008, 11:03 AM
Tate Tate is offline
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"Home" has fire and eSATA

Even knowing nothing from nothing the WD wasn't necessarily my first choice, but Best Buy is the only place I could get to easily and they don't carry LaCie, which is what a couple people had recommended to me.

The new line of MyBook Home does have a 2 Firewire 400 ports, a USB 2.0 and and eSATA input, though. So, it might be a little bit of an upgrade from your model.

Since my options now involve waiting for my car to get out of the shop (part of the problem with acquisition initially), going to Best Buy to return this drive, and driving out to MicroCenter to get a LaCie (or something) I'm thinking of backing up with SuperDuper on this drive so I can get to upgrading to Leopard today.

Last edited by Tate; 02-07-2008 at 11:03 AM. Reason: speling
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  #5  
Old 02-07-2008, 11:26 AM
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dnanian dnanian is offline
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I've been quite unhappy with my test results with Western Digital MyBook drives (I have a series of them), and don't recommend them. They won't work as startup drives for Power PC Macs, and I've had a lot of problems with communication being lost during copies, across sleep/wake cycles, etc.

I've found the Seagate FreeAgents -- also widely available, and with eSATA, etc -- to perform better. Also, the Maxtor OneTouch series...
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  #6  
Old 02-07-2008, 11:33 AM
Tate Tate is offline
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Thanks!

I saw you were responding to threads and was hoping you would chime in, Dave - so, Thanks!

Well, I wish that I had done some of this yesterday before I just couldn't wait to get going, but I'm glad I'm sorting through this before I actually dive in. I greatly appreciate the advice and opinions.

I'll probably exchange the drive for a Maxtor one touch since they are in stock at BB. (I'll look in to the Seagates as well.)

Thanks again!

By the way - I'm sitting over here in Jamaica Plain - we were actually looking at open houses in Weston a couple of weeks ago - small world!
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  #7  
Old 02-07-2008, 01:33 PM
TMay TMay is offline
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Tate

Since your last post says you are in the U.S., OWC (macsales.com) mailorder has been my hard drive supplier for many years now. They have a quality line, I believe all their F/W solutions are bootable and, in any event, they know if they are or not, and have great telephone ordering/support. They are listed in Dave's S/D material as a good vendor.

I think you would find their prices competitive.
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  #8  
Old 02-07-2008, 02:13 PM
JoBoy JoBoy is offline
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Seagate eSATA won't boot a clone

Quote:
Originally Posted by dnanian View Post
I've been quite unhappy with my test results with Western Digital MyBook drives (I have a series of them), and don't recommend them. They won't work as startup drives for Power PC Macs, and I've had a lot of problems with communication being lost during copies, across sleep/wake cycles, etc.

I've found the Seagate FreeAgents -- also widely available, and with eSATA, etc -- to perform better. Also, the Maxtor OneTouch series...
Dave:

Last year I bought a Seagate eSATA external drive. See: http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/pro...ta_hard_drive/

I save my main drive to this Seagate using SD! 2.1.4 running OSX 10.4.11. The Seagate eSATA will not boot. Do you have any experience with this external Seagate? I have a PowerMac dual 2.5 GHz G5 (PPC) 2GB RAM and the eSATA card that came with the Seagate drive. I had decided, without any evidence, that the Seagate didn't have the right chip set. Thanks in advance for any info you may have.
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  #9  
Old 02-07-2008, 04:56 PM
Tate Tate is offline
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Maxtor 1 touch it is!

Thanks for all the feedback.

Just got back from Best Buy with my exchange for a Maxtor OneTouch 4 Plus. They had a couple Seagate drives there, but none had firewire and usb. Although, I'm hoping to use this as an airdisk via usb, for the initial back-up and for any future desktop connections I'm going with the SuperDuper manuals recommendation for a firewire port in addition to the USB.

I'm going to start backing up now and hopefully will be running Leopard soon!
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  #10  
Old 02-07-2008, 06:08 PM
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I think eSATA bootability is based on the interface card, not the drive.
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  #11  
Old 02-07-2008, 06:09 PM
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You can't use an AirDisk for a bootable backup, Tate. See the "Airport Disks" post at the Shirt Pocket blog for a discussion.
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  #12  
Old 02-07-2008, 07:32 PM
Tate Tate is offline
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Not bootable, but still backup?

I did remember reading in the manual that the image on the network drive would not be bootable, but it also says that it can be restored using the OS X install disk. I guess I was thinking that I could possibly create a bootable back-up via firewire (as a fail safe fall backup and something I might replace monthly) and additionally create a disk image over the network and back that up more occasionally since it would be easier with my laptop.

Does it make any sense to do this?

I hadn't really thought it through and I haven't tried to mount a network drive yet, but even if I just use an airdisk as extra wireless accessible storage (I did partition the drive before I SuperDuper'ed) and reconnected to firewire every once and a while that would be better than my current backup system (nothing.)

Is there a way to integrate firewire bootable back-ups and disk images that can be save via network?
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  #13  
Old 02-07-2008, 07:58 PM
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dnanian dnanian is offline
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Yes, you can do that if you'd like.
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