Pros: pre-formatted for Mac, FireWire connection; more than enough capacity, sleek looking
Cons: Can tip over easily (depends on where you keep it)
I needed an external drive to back up my MacBook Pro with Time Machine, and after some quick research settled on the Seagate GoFlex Desk 2 TB External Hard Drive. This drive has more space than I will ever need and is pre-formatted for Macs (and can also be used with Windows without having to reformat). The selling point for me was the FireWire connection (with a maximum speed of up to 800 MB/second). After the initial backup, it now takes less than a minute to back up my entire 320 GB hard drive when done regularly. The only thing that irked me (at first) was the time for the initial backup, which took several days due to the encryption process. I had to keep reconnecting the drive after the Mac went to sleep. This was probably my fault for not disabling sleep mode, but I could find little instruction or documentation about how to properly set it up for the massive first-time backup. Once it was fully backed up, however, the process for keeping my hard drive backed up is ridiculously simple. If you keep it connected via the FireWire, then there is nothing to do as you can set Time Machine to back up automatically. I don't keep it connected at all time, so I connect it once or twice a week and Time Machine only backs up new or changed data, while maintaining all previous backups in their entirety (until the drive is full, at which point it will overwrite the older backups; but I don't see this happening for a long time due to the 2 TB size and the fact that I don't have a ton of data to back up). Having a complete backup is essential before upgrading to OS X Mountain Lion, rumored to be released on July 25. The Seagate GoFlex Desk drive is a solid choice for some peace of mind.
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