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Paul1965
I haven't seen my friends in so long
Joined: Thu Apr 23, 2009 8:29 pm
Posts: 5975
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I need to get a backup drive for a PowerPC iMac G5 (yes, that old). The drives I'm looking at use USB 2.0 or 3.0 but I can't find out what version of USB the iMac uses. Will it matter? Presumably the drive will work with any USB but might simply transfer data at a lower rate?
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| Mon Mar 03, 2014 3:18 pm |
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jonbwfc
What's a life?
Joined: Thu Apr 23, 2009 7:26 pm
Posts: 17040
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Yup, USB is backward compatible. Although backing up over USB 1 is a fairly non-optimal process, you'd be better trying to find a cheap firewire drive. If you want to know exactly what Mac model you've got and what it has, try the free MacTracker app.
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| Mon Mar 03, 2014 3:26 pm |
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Paul1965
I haven't seen my friends in so long
Joined: Thu Apr 23, 2009 8:29 pm
Posts: 5975
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Thanks!
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"I hadn't known there were so many idiots in the world until I started using the Internet." - Stanislaw Lem
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| Mon Mar 03, 2014 3:38 pm |
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steve74
Doesn't have much of a life
Joined: Fri Apr 24, 2009 12:43 pm
Posts: 1798
Location: Manchester
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All G5 iMacs are USB 2.0, but even if you buy a USB 3 drive it'll work - just at the slower speed. But then Apple had crippled USB back then to make their preferred Firewire interface faster.
How will you be using the backup drive? For Time Machine, any format drive will work (USB 2.0, USB 3 or Firewire 800/400). But, if you're intending to use it as a bootable cloned drive, you'll need Firewire - PowerPC Macs like yours can't boot from USB drives, only Firewire.
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* Steve *
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| Mon Mar 03, 2014 8:51 pm |
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big_D
What's a life?
Joined: Thu Apr 23, 2009 8:25 pm
Posts: 10691
Location: Bramsche
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Until around 2010 Apple throttled their USB ports to about 1/3 of their theoretical speed (my 2007 iMac gets around 11MB/s out of my USB drive, the same drive on my 2003 Athlon PC manages around 40MB/s.
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Executive Producer No Agenda Show 246
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| Wed Mar 05, 2014 4:49 am |
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Paul1965
I haven't seen my friends in so long
Joined: Thu Apr 23, 2009 8:29 pm
Posts: 5975
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Yes, just for Time Machine though I may get a FireWire one later as a bootable drive. Thanks for the info about that.
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"I hadn't known there were so many idiots in the world until I started using the Internet." - Stanislaw Lem
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| Thu Mar 06, 2014 1:58 pm |
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