Would appreciate any comments on whether this drive is fast enough for storing photo library (eg. using Apeture on a MacBook Pro or Air).
391759
Yes, as long as you use it with the Thunderbolt cable that comes with it. Since my Macair is from mid 2011 does not come with USB3, I am only using it with the Thunderbolt cable and have all my music, photo library & movies stored on this disk
2137309
It should be, if you format it for a Mac using disk utility (HFS Journaled) it should work fine.
2267733
Sorry, I don't know. It seems fast enough. But since I use it for Time Machine it doesn't matter very much. You can ask LaCie.
982837
This drive is very slow which is fine for data storage but may not be ideal for an OS system drive. It depends on what you are trying to do but you could go with an microSD card like the SanDisk SDSDQUA-064G-U46A Ultra 64 GB microSDXC Class 10 UHS-1 Memory Card 30MB/s with Adapter and take up one of your USB slots with the elago Mobile Nano II USB 2.0 microSDHC Flash Memory Card Reader to achieve the same nearly seamless effect for less money. Granted it is half the storage but you can always upgrade later.
1965738
Wow! I think it'd depend on how you use it and set it up. For me the 4TB with thunderbolt has been faster. But I use it mainly for moving data between my mac and the backups.
1294086
Haven't tried large files, do not own a MAC, but noticed it writes slower than my older USB 3.0 drives.
982835
It should work under Windows 8 as an "external" drive the same as it works under OSX. I use it to store my iTunes and iPhoto libraries and it works great for those purposes. That is what it is intended for. It fits perfectly in my 13" MBP and stays in it's slot all the time as semi permanent storage. I would not use it to install programs on it and certainly not to install an OS. It comes formatted in xFat which should work with Windows 8 no problem.
1303113
Absolutely. I actually have two of these externals and they're both hooked up by USB 2.0 to my 27" iMac which is 5 years old and doesn't have 3.0 ports. I read that 2.0 is slower but they transfer data rapidly so I don't feel like they're too slow. They're great little drives. They take up hardly any space and they are extremely quiet. I don't even hear them. I've had no trouble with them. My last hard drive was also a Porsche and I used it for 8 years without a hiccup. You won't see me buying anything but this brand because they have been so reliable.
2045779
It would be pretty slow compared to an internal hard drive. You could probably make it work alright if you keep the Lightroom catalog on a faster internal drive, and only used the USB drive to store image files.
1992830
I have had this drive for about 2 months now. I am connecting using the Thunderbolt cable. Very fast, able to back up my Mac Book Pro in less than 15 minutes. The case is very nice construction, sits up so it gets plenty of cooling. Constructed very good. It makes very little noise. One nice feature I noticed when I power off the Mac Book Pro it turns itself off too. I would recommend this to anyone who needs a good back up system. I believe the backup program I am using is called Carbon Copy.
2146739
The drive is supported, it comes formatted in fat32. You can reformat to mac only or exFat if you want. USB 3 is not supported on macs (yet, you'll need a new mac), but the drive works just fine.I have 2, use them both on mac's and pc's with no issues. Great drive, really fast even on usb2.
884747
You would be far better off to get an SSD and USB 3.0 UASP enclosure...you would spend about the same amount of money to get twice the speed and twice the storage for your photos. :)
1208993
no its fine. I can guarantee that you will never see the difference between 4 and more on OSX as it will just cache stuff to the ssd which is really fast as well.
2188618
I am currently using a 2 TB WD My Book for Mac on OSX 10.9.1. It works flawlessly and am very happy with it. I set it up when I was still using Lion. Then upgraded to Mavericks and had no problem.
489053
Just to throw in my 2 cents here, the Disk Utility reformat mentioned above in Andrew's post is spot-on. The drive so far as been great to use. However, I'm running Mac 10.5.6 and it was immediately recognized when I first plugged it in: it mounted and Time Machine asked if I wanted to use it for backups...I did the reformatting anyway as the apps on board are no use to a Mac owner.BTW, the $99 price was unbelievable!Fingers crossed on reliability,Yikesboy
809744
I have both the 256gb and the 1tb USB drives. So far I am quite impressed by the transfer speed and reliability of them. So much that I carry a great deal of information to include pictures and songs. So far neither one of them failed on me. You need to verify that the drive is a legitimate one by checking that on the USB port connector has the serial number engraved. I understand that there are some cheap ones on the market with a much lesser performance and capacity from what is described! I hope this may help!
197317
I bought the drive to use as a drive to store books, movies and photos. I'm not sure if it is a backup clone of an intel Mac with Mavericks. I know it works very well for what I bought it for. However, I am getting the Airport by Apple to use with Time Machine. It should arrive at my house today. That boosts your wi-fi as well as backs up automatically.