Backing up to WD MyBook Premium

[cookiecookie]

Hey.

I need some help pretty quickly. I need to know what harddrive I can use to back up my Intel MacBook Pro 2.16GHZ. I want to do a full clone.

I bought a 250GB USB drive only to read that I couldn't use USB drives to boot off so I returned it. I've now read on this site I can use them.

Anyway, all I want to know is, will I be able to do a full clone to a WD MyBook Premium (Firewire) and then boot off it/restore my internal HD if the worst should happen? If not, what drive can I use?

[dnanian]

In general, I suggest a LaCie d2/d3 (non-Porsche) or Little Big Disk, Maxtor OneTouch III (FireWire), WiebeTech or OWC drive. I don't know what chipset the WD drive uses -- if it's not a true Oxford-based drive I wouldn't suggest it.

Once you get a drive in house, make sure you partition it (with Disk Utility) as "GUID" or "Apple Partition Map", not "Master Boot Record", which is Windows partitioning and won't allow boot.

Hope that helps!

[ResoluteTurnip]

Probably too late for cookiecookie, but maybe it will help someone else. I just purchased the WD Premium 320G and it backed up and booted fine via firewire.

[dnanian]

Hi, ResoluteTurnip -- do you know if the drive uses the Oxford chipset?

[ResoluteTurnip]

No I don't know, but I did find a response in their Knowledge Base that said they use Oxford 922 and Initio 1430 bridge chips for their external hard drives that implement Firewire. Apparently they used Oxford 911 during 2004 & 2005 on an 80 and 120G hard drive with external Firewire (1394a) -- whatever that means.

[dnanian]

Hm: the Oxford is definitely what you'd want, and not the Initio. I wonder when they used the non-Oxford bridge...