[RedStar]

I'm looking into an external drive and I have narrowed it down to two options. One drive will come prebuilt into a firewire case, it is a 40GB ExelStor (IBM 120GXP OEM) 7200rpm 8.5ms 2MB Cache ATA/100. The other is a western digital caviar special edition with 40 GB, 7200 RPM 8.9ms and an 8MB Cache. The latter will cost me a little over $170, while the prebuilt drive with the 2MB buffer will come in at about $160. Will the extra 6MB cache buffer greatly improve performance for me? Or would I be better off just spending the extra money on more GB?

[CIA]

I'm guessing this is a firewire external you are building. Unless you have a Quicksilver G4 or later, you won't notice the speed of the Oxford-911 chipset for the firewire bridge, get a cheaper external case that doesn't have the Oxford-911 chipset.

If you have a QS or later G4, get the Oxford-911 case, and the WesternDigital 8meg cache drive, I'm running 2 80 gig models, and they SCREAM. You can find them rather cheap too, (do a search on Pricewatch for Special Edition) I paid $106 after shipping each.

[RedStar]

I'm running a Ti 800, so i'm guessing that the oxford chip would be advantageous right?

[RedStar]

Also, would an 8MB buffer even work in this enclosure? It says max of 2 MB, but i just think it's so damn cool looking.

[CIA]

I have a similar drive case that's blue, (Firewiredirect.com's drive) It's works great and all, but the Oxford-911 chipset is kinda overkill unless you are using a quicksilver or later G4. I guess in the long run it's smart to get that case, since you can move the drive to your new computer. Anyway, it can NEVER hurt to get the WD Special edition drives, it's more the issue of cost. If you can afford it, get the faster WD drive.