Does such a thing exist?

Ohio

I'm looking for a external backup hard drive.

I want it to:

• Work with both Mac and PC
• Plug in via USB
• Not need an extrenal power supply (this isn't real important, though)
• Behave like a simple drag-and-drop thumb drive
• Have around 250gb of storage.

Does this exist? I want to be able to plug it into my PC, drag crap onto it, then plug it into my Mac, drag crap onto it, and then stick it in a closet.

I don't need more than 250 gigs. Price is a factor. Please link to such a thing if you can find it.

Thanks!

RUNN1NGMAN

Any USB hard drive will do what you want, as long as you format it correctly. Someone else will have to confirm, but I think if you format as FAT32 you should be set.

wasted pixels

I don't know if you can find an external hard drive without a power supply, hard drives need a TON of power. That said, if you can live with plugging it in, the Western Digital MyBook does exactly what you need, and they're cheap as chips at the storage level you're looking for (around $70 for your needs). I use it with my Mac and PC for exactly the kind of drag-and-drop storage you're looking for.

Daenris

The problem here is in the filesystem that the drive is formatted as, not the drive itself. The easiest solution would be to make sure you format the drive as FAT32 after you buy it. However, this will place some restrictions on how large your files can be on the drive (no files > 4GB).

To get around this you can format the drive as NTFS instead of FAT32. Without any further work this will allow you to read/write files from Windows and read files from your Mac. Obviously this isn't really ideal either.

From a brief google search there are certainly ways to allow Mac OSX to read/write NTFS (or ways to have Windows read/write HFS, though I suspect it's easier the other way). For example: http://www.lifehack.org/articles/lifehack/how-to-read-and-write-ntfs-windows-partition-on-mac-os-x.html

KMFurDM

http://www.amazon.com/SimpleTech-Signature-FS-U25-320H-Portable/dp/B0012R9WHW/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1221502081&sr=8-1

I have one. Runs off USB power only with no external power needed.

Ohio

Thank you all. Problem solved. Thread over.

embrik

Ohio wrote: »

I'm looking for a external backup hard drive.

I want it to:

[*]Not need an extrenal power supply (this isn't real important, though)

For future reference / reference for anyone else looking, the term to search for is "bus-powered". There are a ton of bus-powered drives available, but they do tend to cost more.