Q: What is the "must-have" accessory for a Mac?
A: A bus-powered 2 1/2 inch FireWire hard drive, of course.
Q: Why is that so?
A: Well, it's a long story. But, to cut it short, the FW HDD allows you to store data and also boot up a Mac.
Which one?
Sarotech Cutie Combo (FireWire + USB II) HDD casingThere are so many FireWire Hard Disk Drives on the market, how do I know which one works or suits me better? These are the questions I asked myself when I first wanted to get myself a FW HDD. After doing some research on the subject, I've decided to assemble a FW HDD myself. Sounds challenging? Not at all, it's really simple and straightforward actually.
By assembling one yourself, you not only get to choose the design of the casing you like, the capacity of hard disk space you want, but also feel a sense of achievement when you see the assembled piece. However, before you rush out to get the items required to assemble a FW HDD, you've got to remember one very important point. Always choose a very well built and reliable FW HDD casing, do not get a cheap and one with a lousy quality. You may end up getting frustrated over the quality of the casing (which I can attest to) or worst... loosing precious data. Why do I say that?
Well, before acquiring my current FW HDD casing, I was using an al-cheapo brand which was really slim. Thinking that portability was more important then anything else, I was not bothered with the lousy build. How wrong could I get? The casing failed me when I was overseas and had to have a replacement shipped to me via DHL as I really needed to get the data files from the HDD installed in that lousy casing.
The Sarotech Cutie
Ports from left to right: Power,USB II, FireWire (4 pins) and FireWire (6 pins)After returning from the trip, I began looking for a better casing to house my HDD and the precious data on it. The Sarotech Cutie was the one for me. Although it is not the thinnest casing around, it is definitely one of the most well designed and built. Aluminum was used to construct the casing; the material gives it a really solid feel. The Printed Circuit Board with its electronic components inside the casing was also of a very high quality (not some sloppy PCB that was glued onto a plastic casing). It is Bus-powered; hence, it does not require any extra power supply. Which means you do not have to bring along an extra power adapter, one less thing to carry and one less thing to forget or lose.
The package comes in a box and includes, a couple of USB II cables, FireWire cables, a fine black pouch, screws and a little screwdriver for assembly. After choosing the right casing, you've got to get yourself a 2 1/2 inch HDD. I chose a 60GB Hitachi with 8MB cache and spins at 5400RPM; the reason is that this drive has the most value for money at the time of purchase.
Installation
Installing the HDD into the FW casing was a simpler affair as compared to searching for the components. After removing the upper casing followed by the PCB, the HDD was carefully installed on the PCB by aligning the IDE connectors on the HDD with the pins on the PCB. After making sure that the contacts are good, I began securing the HDD onto the PCB with the supplied screws. Afterwhich, the whole module was carefully placed inside the lower half of the casing and the top casing was put back in place and secured with screws!
Initializing
Next step after assembling the FW HDD is to initialize the drive so that it can be used. To do this, connect one end of the FW cable into the FW port of the Mac and the other end of the cable into the FW port of the HDD. In a few moments, a prompt will appear asking you whether you want to initialize the HDD. Click Yes and select a name you like. After initializing the drive, it's ready for use. You can now store documents, digital images, MP3s and any other files you like on it.
Installing Mac OS X
One of the coolest things on the Mac platform is the ability to boot up any Mac from a FireWire hard drive that has Mac OS X installed on it. In other words, you can bring your FW HDD to any Mac that has a built-in FireWire port and boot it up using your FW HDD. Getting interesting? Well lets get on with it. Installing Mac OS X on the FW HDD is the same thing as installing it on your Mac. You mount the FW HDD on the Desktop, put the installation CD into the optical drive and click install. Step through the installation process, and in no time, you've got a boot-able FW HDD. How hard can it get?
Cloning versus Installing
I prefer to clone my 'system' rather than installing a fresh copy, what's the big deal one might ask? Well, first, I can have all of my applications, files and other data with me. It's like having my own portable Mac, except I'll only be carrying the FW HDD around. Secondly, I can have the look and feel of my very own Mac, something which I've been accustomed to. Thirdly, the stuff stored on my FW HDD can serve as a backup. If the main HDD on my Mac fails, I can still boot up from the portable drive and carry on working. Sounds interesting? You bet it is! But, how do I do it?
I usually use a fine little piece of software called CarbonCopyCloner to clone my 'system' drive onto the FW HDD. The process is really very simple and straightforward, but you've got to go through the readme document a little to get a better understanding. To put it simply, select the source (which is the system drive) and the target (which is the FW HDD) on the software interface. Then click on the lock icon to "unlock" the cloning procedure, type in the password and click clone. After some time, depending on the size of the system you're cloning, a prompt will pop up to inform you that cloning was completed. At this stage, you can fire up System Preferences, select the newly "blessed" FW HDD as the startup drive and restart the Mac.
If all things went well, you'll be booting up from the FW HDD in no time. Do give it a try, I'm sure you'll benefit from having a backup bootable drive someday.