I figure this is entirely acceptable since the intention is just to create backup/clones. I can however boot my clone over USB (USB2 in my case - a little slower, but it works). I can successfully create backup/clones to the MEP over FW, but I CANNOT BOOT FROM FW. If you can't find a better option yourself, this might be worth looking into, but there are a couple of caveats that you might want to know about. After shopping around I settled on an OWC 4TB Mercury Elite Pro (w/ FW & USB3). I felt the need for a larger external HD, but unfortunately Lacie no longer offers FireWire options (and even the resellers don't have Quadras available anymore).

I've been using Carbon Copy Cloner for backups to a pair of Lacie d2 Quadras over FireWire. I'm basically in the same boat as the Original Poster: 2008 24in iMac, 10.6.8 Snow Lion, with intentions to ultimately update to 10.11 El Capitan, but with a stop at 10.9 Mavericks along the way. This may be too late, but here's my 2-cents. He also said my best bet for finding an external drive that meets my criteria is from a third-party developer and not Apple itself. The guy at Apple said that it would probably be safe to do the upgrade without backing up first, but I would like a second opinion on that if possible.

Of course, if you think its okay for me to do the upgrade to El Capitan without backing up, then the drive only needs to be compatible with El Capitan and not Snow Leopard as in point #2 above. Compatible with both Snow Leopard and El Capitan Compatible with early 2009 24-inch iMacĢ. So Im basically looking for an external hard drive that meets these criteria:ġ.

I would also like to use the built-in Time Machine feature of the iMac to do the backups. I would like to upgrade the OS to 10.11.6 (El Capitan), but it is recommended by Apple to backup my system first. I have an early 2009 24-inch iMac desktop running OS X 10.6.8 (Snow Leopard).

Hard drive for imac 2007