Backing up to an external USB 2.0 HD

In article
,
GeneralSunTzu wrote:

> Hello,
>
> my usual retailer is flogging billions of cheap USB 2.0 hard disks, at
> really reasonable prices.
> I always stuck to FireWire 400 or FireWire 800 for backup, which I do
> with Super Duper.
>
> Anybody out there has experiences with backing up to a USB 2.0 HD, and
> can offer an opinion, as to whether it would be much slower than with
> FW 400 or FW 800?
>
> Thank you.

Most of my backups are actually over the network, so a USB2
attached external disk is NOT my bottleneck.

Where I have found Firewire most effective is when I'm doing a
FULL backup. Incremental backups generally spend more time
searching for the file to be backed up, then actually moving data.

The one exception is if you have something like VMware Fusion or
Parallels which you use a lot and that container file holding the
guest OS is being backed up. Then there is a good chance that you
will be moving gigabytes of data every backup and in this case a
Firewire drive would improve things. However, if you run backups
overnight, then it doesn't really matter if you finish at 1AM or
3AM as long as you are finished before you need the system again.

Bob Harris
 >> Stay informed about: Backing up to an external USB 2.0 HD 

Thanks folks.

In other words: if I can continue with FW 400 and/or 800, so much the
better.
If not, then I might contemplate switching to USB 2.0, as there is a
performance hit, but not a paralysing one.
I have a MacBook Pro 2nd generation (2.33 GHz Core 2 Duo CPU), and I
should thus be able to boot from it, too.

Will do as advised.
 >> Stay informed about: Backing up to an external USB 2.0 HD 

On 28/12/07 13:31, in article
281220071431296938%UsulALSO-ME@PLEASE-REMOVE-MEpobox.com, "GeneralSunTzu"
wrote:

> Thanks folks.
>
> In other words: if I can continue with FW 400 and/or 800, so much the
> better.
> If not, then I might contemplate switching to USB 2.0, as there is a
> performance hit, but not a paralysing one.
> I have a MacBook Pro 2nd generation (2.33 GHz Core 2 Duo CPU), and I
> should thus be able to boot from it, too.
>
> Will do as advised.

Don't forget if you want to boot from the USB2 drive it needs initialising
as GUID, not APM as with a PPC Mac. All USB2 drives I've seen come PC FAT32
formatted.
 >> Stay informed about: Backing up to an external USB 2.0 HD 

In article , Steve Bell
wrote:

> Don't forget if you want to boot from the USB2 drive it needs initialising
> as GUID, not APM as with a PPC Mac. All USB2 drives I've seen come PC FAT32
> formatted.

actually, it will boot just fine from apm, you just can't *install* to
apm on an intel mac. use a powerpc mac to do the install (or clone)
and get around that limitation. the advantage of that is to have a
single drive capable of booting either powerpc and intel macs (with
leopard, which is universal), but unless one needs that, guid is
definitely preferred for intel.
 >> Stay informed about: Backing up to an external USB 2.0 HD 

In article , nospam
wrote:

> In article , Steve Bell
> wrote:
>
> > Don't forget if you want to boot from the USB2 drive it needs initialising
> > as GUID, not APM as with a PPC Mac. All USB2 drives I've seen come PC FAT32
> > formatted.
>
> actually, it will boot just fine from apm, you just can't *install* to
> apm on an intel mac. use a powerpc mac to do the install (or clone)
> and get around that limitation. the advantage of that is to have a
> single drive capable of booting either powerpc and intel macs (with
> leopard, which is universal), but unless one needs that, guid is
> definitely preferred for intel.

Thank you.

Our family (three Macs) owns all Intel CPUs, so I will also take care
to reformat using GUID, should I be going for USB 2.0.
 >> Stay informed about: Backing up to an external USB 2.0 HD