Originally Posted by Capt Chambo
You don't mention which computer/OS system you are using, but if you are using a Mac then I can thoroughly recommend the Smartdisk FireLite. It uses a firewire which is only marginally slower than USB2. The disc is preformatted to HFS+ but can be altered to FAT32 or NTFS if you desire (I haven't bothered as HFS+ is recommended for the Mac OSs)
I tried a Lacie and USB2 but it just would not mount so returned it for this Smartdisk Firelite which is simplicity itself.
I thought Firewire (400) was marginally faster compared to USB 2.0 because it has a more sustained rate of data transfer? If you use Firewire 800, it wipes the floor with USB 2.
I also use a Mac. It had a hard drive failure last December but luckily everything was backed up to my Lacie drive which I could boot from via the Firewire cable!
Everything was as it was when I backed up, system settings etc. I managed to install a new drive and then clone it from my back up. Fantastically convenient.
Have you tired the
Super Duper! app for backups on your Mac? It has a smart update feature which only replaces files/folders that have been changed since your last backup, saving a lot of time. It also has a schedule feature for automatic runs.