Thanks.
I didn't realise Intel Macs could boot from USB. I hadn't tried it and just assumed it was only FW, as the non-Intel ones are. Thanks for the recommendation for WD and I now know I don't need FW on the drive.
Regards, Graham


on 22/01/2010 17:03 David Lazarus sent the following:
Graham,

I have used Lacie in the past. But have been switching to Western Digital for 
the last two years. Only last week bought a 500 Gb Western Digital My Passport 
Essential. It is certainly very small and USB 2 bus powered. Though it needs to 
be run off the machine. I tried a powered hub and that did not work.

You will need a intel mac to be able to boot from USB. Firewire will boot on 
all macs. There is a FW version called My Passport Studio which may be the best 
bet for what you need. I hope that has helped.

David


For the past 3+ years, I've been buying and using portable/mini drives for my 
bootable backup drives and for storing backup data too. Now I've switched all 
my computers to Snow Leopard (from Tiger) I'm using them for TM backups too. 
For all the time I've been buying them, I've used Formac 'disk mini'. They've 
been excellent, and they come with both FW and USB connections. I need the 
portability these mini disks offer (but I use full-size external drives too).

Now it seems much more difficult to buy Formac disk mini drives. My original 
suppliers (DABS, ebuyer, solutions-inc) have all stopped stocking them. And, if 
I can find them anywhere, it rarely includes the firewire version. If you 
follow the suppliers link on the Formac website, none of the suppliers listed 
now appear to keep these drives. Does anyone know what' s up with Formac and 
why getting these drives is now very difficult?

And is there an alternative manufacturer (but not Lacie) that people would 
recommend using for mini drives? Western Digital seems to be the most prolific. 
I use their internal drives, but have read many reviews stating their portables 
are not so good. In addition, many of the alternative manufacturers seem to 
only have a USB port which is fine for backups but presumably no good to boot 
from? Am I right that only a FW external drive can be booted from?

So what do you do, and what would you recommend?
Thanks, Graham

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