Rosemary, I tend to prefer external Firewire drives with built-in
power supplies like the Sarotech HardBox range. I hate having those
separate powerbricks to carry round whenever you move the drive
between computers:
http://www.sarotech.com/english/cgi/pd.cgi?cmd=view&rno=10
We've bought 3 Sarotech drives off Daniel Kerr at MacWizardry who
always seems to come in cheaper than anyone else yet gives excellent,
friendly service (and he's local).
As far as backup software is concerned, I have used Retrospect and
other software in the past but these days use SuperDuper:
http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.html
and also FolderSynchronizerX:
http://www.softobe.com/products/flsy/pp.html
You can daisy-chain several USB drives off of the new Airport Express
- We've tried it briefly with ours and it worked nicely. Speed is
certainly slower than direct connect, but for backups that run late
at night or whatever, I wouldn't find that to be a problem. When you
wake up your laptop in range of the Airport, the drive(s)
automatically mount on the desktop of your laptop. SuperDuper or
FolderSynchronizer can then run scheduled backups whenever you wish.
With new Apple laptops all shipping with 802.11n, wireless
performance is quite impressive (I stream EyeTV digital TV recordings
from our loungeroom iMac to my MacBook Pro in the back yard without a
problem) and the wireless range is easily double our old 802.11g
Netgear basestation.
You can always disconnect the external drive from the Airport and
plug it directly into either of your Macs when you need faster
performance.
Of course once Leopard ships, Time Machine looks like it'll do the
backup thing very well.
-Mart
------------------------------------
Martin Hill
email: mart "at" ozmac.com
homepages: http://mart.ozmac.com
Mb: 0417-967-969 hm: (08)9314-5242
-Mart
------------------------------------
Martin Hill
email: mart "at" ozmac.com
homepages: http://mart.ozmac.com
Mb: 0417-967-969 hm: (08)9314-5242
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