WD My Passport and Time Machine?

[bowjest]

Hello to all,

I currently use a LaCie 1TB desktop drive (with firewire) for my Time Machine backups, but was thinking about getting something more portable to do additional backups with (while on the go and as a secondary precaution at home).

Has anyone here used any of the WD My Passports (as far as I can see they only come with USB in the 1TB model rather than firewire)? There is thread in the archives from 2008, but am hoping for feedback that is more up to date.

Is there a real difference between the "standard" model and the "for Mac" model:

http://tinyurl.com/6xlsdu7

I'm assuming I can just reformat a standard (and much cheaper version) rather than choke up twice as much money for the same amount of storage.

Will backups be significantly slower with over USB? By that I mean instead of a few minutes more like a half hour to an hour to complete?

Thanks,

Bowjest

 

[jbarley]

Will backups be significantly slower with over USB? By that I mean instead of a few minutes more like a half hour to an hour to complete?

Thanks,

Bowjest

The initial (first) backup will take somewhat longer, but after that the time difference for the periodic backups will be negligible.
In other words "instead of a few minutes" it will take a few minutes more.

 

[ElDiabloConCaca]

Is there a real difference between the "standard" model and the "for Mac" model:

http://tinyurl.com/6xlsdu7

Other than price, there is no difference at all except for the format the drive comes in (FAT32 vs. HFS+).

I'm assuming I can just reformat a standard (and much cheaper version) rather than choke up twice as much money for the same amount of storage.

Yep, and unless you've been hit in the head too many times, that is exactly what you should do!

Will backups be significantly slower with over USB? By that I mean instead of a few minutes more like a half hour to an hour to complete?

All of my backups go over USB to 5,400 rpm desktop Western Digital drives. My laptop goes to a WD Passport drive. Neither exhibit extremely long backup times -- of course, if I go and change one of my virtual machines that's 16GB in size, it backs that up, and backing up 16GB takes quite a while -- no matter whether you're using Firewire or USB (although Firewire is quite a bit faster).

The end-all, be-all depends on how much data you're backing up.

 

[bowjest]

Thanks, jbarley and Diablo.

Much appreciated.

Bowjest