[JakBeatZ]

Greetings,

I'm looking to purchase some external storage. I've done some digging and the WD SE 120GB 8MB drives seem to be best of breed right now for that capacity bracket (if I'm wrong, please tell me!!!).

I'm looking for an enclosure. I don't know much about FW, but my 17" PB comes with 1394b, so I'd like to get a FW800 enclosure, but I'm unclear about something: Is there a FW800 enclosure that doesn't require an external power supply, rather will run off the power from the PB? I'd like to keep the cable mess to a minimum!

If that's possible, can someone give me some recommendations on a high quality FW800 enclosure that supports power over FW, will keep the drive cool, is reliable, looks nice and won't completely break the bank, if possible?! Also, it would be nice if the enclosure was backwards compatible (USB2/USB/FW400).

Thanks in advance!

[CatOne]

Originally posted by JakBeatZ:
Greetings,

I'm looking to purchase some external storage. I've done some digging and the WD SE 120GB 8MB drives seem to be best of breed right now for that capacity bracket (if I'm wrong, please tell me!!!).

I'm looking for an enclosure. I don't know much about FW, but my 17" PB comes with 1394b, so I'd like to get a FW800 enclosure, but I'm unclear about something: Is there a FW800 enclosure that doesn't require an external power supply, rather will run off the power from the PB? I'd like to keep the cable mess to a minimum!

If that's possible, can someone give me some recommendations on a high quality FW800 enclosure that supports power over FW, will keep the drive cool, is reliable, looks nice and won't completely break the bank, if possible?! Also, it would be nice if the enclosure was backwards compatible (USB2/USB/FW400).

Thanks in advance!

I'm not so sure you need an FW800 enclosure -- what's your point in wanting/needing it?

If you want a bus powered device I believe you're going to need a laptop drive (2.5") -- in this case FW400 is actually quite a bit faster than the drive's transfer rate, so getting a FW 800 inclosure will give you *no* performance improvement over a FW 400 enclosure.

If you want a bus powered drive, I'd recommend you just get something like a La Cie pocketdrive or build it up using a Cutie or Clear911, depending on whether you have a 9.5mm drive or a 12mm drive.

[JakBeatZ]

Originally posted by CatOne:
I'm not so sure you need an FW800 enclosure -- what's your point in wanting/needing it?

If you want a bus powered device I believe you're going to need a laptop drive (2.5") -- in this case FW400 is actually quite a bit faster than the drive's transfer rate, so getting a FW 800 inclosure will give you *no* performance improvement over a FW 400 enclosure.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but FW400 = 400Mb/s. ATA100 = 100MB/s

400Mb/s = 50MB/s which is 50% of the maximum transfer rate of an ATA100 drive. FW800 = 100MB/s which is 100% of the maximum transfer rate of an ATA100 drive (as per spec, which isn't real world, I know).

If you want a bus powered drive, I'd recommend you just get something like a La Cie pocketdrive or build it up using a Cutie or Clear911, depending on whether you have a 9.5mm drive or a 12mm drive.

If I understand what you are saying here, bus powered drives are only possible if the drive in teh enclosure is a 2.5" laptop drive. Full size desktop drives aren't able to be powered on the bus, thus they require an external power supply. Is that correct?

Even still, the 17" has an ATA100 drive, so why not get FW800? It's the same speed as the native drive on the PB.

Is this correct, or am I totally off the mark in my assumptions here?

[krove]

Bare Feats has done some speed tests on FireWire 400 versus FW 800. 800 definitely has some speed advantages, but good luck finding a case that is bus-powered. Generally you need smaller, notebook size drives for bus-powered operation. FW 800 is definitely for bigger, faster storage. Doesn't make sense to put a small drive into an expensive FW800 case because they are generally not as fast (slower RPM and smaller cache). FW 400 is good for portable, bus-powered drives.

[CatOne]

Originally posted by JakBeatZ:
Correct me if I'm wrong, but FW400 = 400Mb/s. ATA100 = 100MB/s

400Mb/s = 50MB/s which is 50% of the maximum transfer rate of an ATA100 drive. FW800 = 100MB/s which is 100% of the maximum transfer rate of an ATA100 drive (as per spec, which isn't real world, I know).

Well, that may be, but the fact is that ATA 100 "drives" don't actually saturate the ATA 100 bus. The bus has more capacity than the drives can deliver. This is why when you put today's fastest drives (7200 RPM 8 MB Cache) on a SATA bus (150 MB/sec) they perform *no* faster than they do on ATA 100... the drive can't deliver enough bandwidth to saturate the bus. So it's unimportant at the moment.

If I understand what you are saying here, bus powered drives are only possible if the drive in teh enclosure is a 2.5" laptop drive. Full size desktop drives aren't able to be powered on the bus, thus they require an external power supply. Is that correct?

Even still, the 17" has an ATA100 drive, so why not get FW800? It's the same speed as the native drive on the PB.

Is this correct, or am I totally off the mark in my assumptions here?

I'm personally unaware of an external 3.5" enclosure which is bus powered. The 3.5" drives take a lot more power to run (they're designed to run in workstations, not laptops, so they're faster and take lots more power). So you're limited to 2.5" drives which top out at 5400 RPM (you can get 3.5" drives up to 7200 RPM for sure, and I believe there are now 10,000 RPM IDE drives available).

The drive in the 17" is either a 4200 or 5400 RPM drive, and I can guarantee you it's not saturating that ATA100 bus. If you use a desktop and laptop to do the same things frequently, it'll be obvious how much slower a 2.5" drive is. My PC laptop takes 2 minutes to boot (GRIND GRIND GRIND) with disk going crazy. My PC desktop takes 17 seconds. Heh.