[Kestral]

I am looking for a 7200 rpm Firewire external hard drive. I like the new LaCie's a lot, but I was wondering, is there a such thing as full sized 3.5" external drive/cases that can be powered from the computer without a seperate power adapter? The idea of being able to just plug the external hard drive into my Mac laptop without having to also plug in a power supply would be very attractive indeed.

[Axo1ot1]

3.5 inch drives need more power than a firewire port can supply.

Also: look into buing a bare drive and getting a firewire enclosure for it. This can often save a lot of money and makes the individual components more customizable. It's easy to do too

[Kestral]

Hi Axo1ot1, thanks for the post, I found the answer, Wiebetech makes a bus-powered Firewire enclosure that can run 7200 rpm drives:

http://www.wiebetech.com/products.html

The case is ugly as sin though but damn, it works. As far as price goes, no worries, I know the product rep for the hard drive I want so I can get it at wholesale, just that I wish it was bus-powered. Decisions, decisions.

[art_director]

i wish i had read this post a few months ago.