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tavilach · Apr 4, 2005, 08:13 PM

Office Depot had a great deal on an 80 GB Maxtor HD (7200 RPM) at $50, free shipping. I was in need of an external HD, and had been looking for a cheap one, so I bought it.

This is going to be my first external HD, and I'm mainly going to use it for backup. I'm not sure what type of enclosure to get. I don't want to spend a lot of money, but if I've spent $50 on the HD, I want it to be...good. Are there any cheap Firewire 800 enclosures? Would I just be better off using USB 2.0? Maybe Firewire 400? I'm not really sure what to look for, and I don't want to spend much time on this decision.

I'm just looking for cheap, functional, and fast (enough). Don't know if those mix well

.

Krusty · Apr 4, 2005, 08:52 PM

Get a Combo FW400/USB 2.0 like This one (which matches the design theme of the PM G5) and costs $42 (though this site occasionally has it on sale for < $40).

FW800 is still rather expensive and would only be useable on a limited number of machines (Mac or PC) at this point. USB 2.0 is good to have only because so many PCs lack firewire. Can you tell I value breadth of compatibility more than pure raw speed ?

The upper bound of your new drive's speed wouldn't saturate the available bandwidth the FW800 anyway.

If you wanna spend even less, I'd recommend going FW over USB 2.0. Here is a good short read on the topic.

tavilach · Apr 4, 2005, 09:14 PM

Originally posted by Krusty:
Get a Combo FW400/USB 2.0 like This one (which matches the design theme of the PM G5) and costs $42 (though this site occasionally has it on sale for < $40).

FW800 is still rather expensive and would only be useable on a limited number of machines (Mac or PC) at this point. USB 2.0 is good to have only because so many PCs lack firewire. Can you tell I value breadth of compatibility more than pure raw speed ? The upper bound of your new drive's speed wouldn't saturate the available bandwidth the FW800 anyway.

If you wanna spend even less, I'd recommend going FW over USB 2.0. Here is a good short read on the topic.

Are you saying that FW 800 would not offer a huge speed advantage? I'm not planning on doing much transferring from my computer to others', but if I need to do so, I can always use someone else's HD. Thus, compatibility isn't really an issue, although it would be nice to be able to use my FW 400 hub.

If the speed difference would be less than 50% better, I definetely think that FW 400 is the way to go. If, however, FW is only a bit faster than USB, then maybe I could just go the super cheap route with a USB only enclosure? Is FW really that much better for HD's?

chabig · Apr 4, 2005, 09:28 PM

Firewire 800 will provide zero speed advantage. Although the bus is faster, your data transfer rate will be limited by the speed of your hard drive, not by the bus. Firewire 800 really shines when you have multiple devices on the bus, each one using a portion of the available bandwidth. But with one computer and one hard drive it will make no difference.

Chris

tavilach · Apr 4, 2005, 10:16 PM

Originally posted by chabig:
Firewire 800 will provide zero speed advantage. Although the bus is faster, your data transfer rate will be limited by the speed of your hard drive, not by the bus. Firewire 800 really shines when you have multiple devices on the bus, each one using a portion of the available bandwidth. But with one computer and one hard drive it will make no difference.

Chris

Cool

.

Krusty · Apr 5, 2005, 12:04 AM

Originally posted by chabig:
Firewire 800 will provide zero speed advantage. Although the bus is faster, your data transfer rate will be limited by the speed of your hard drive, not by the bus.

That's not strictly true as many of the newer 7200 rpm drives DO in fact transfer data faster that the FW400 bus allows. Max throughput on FW400 is theoretically 50mb/sec but actually tops out in the upper 30s in most instances. Still, you are correct that you definitely WON'T see a major boost in speed from FW800 ... it IS more bandwidth than any normal single hard drive can saturate. Check out various speed tests around the web ... some drives can move data faster than FW400 allows and show moderately better performance for large file copies etc.

One thing is for sure ... USB 2.0 is the bottom of the barrel for speed (on Macs at least).

tavilach · Apr 5, 2005, 01:15 AM

Do you have any other suggestions, Krusty? I'm weary about purchasing from a site that I've never heard about. Also, if there's anything for around $30, that would be nice.

Krusty · Apr 5, 2005, 06:06 PM

The FW400-only cases are around $30, it just the combo units that are around $40. You'll not likely find a combo unit in the $30 range for a full-sized drive (some of the 2.5" laptop drive combo enclosures are that cheap).

As far as the vendor, I don't know what to tell you. Go to a vendor you do trust and see what they have.

SSharon · Apr 5, 2005, 10:48 PM

newegg.com is the place to go for this stuff. I bought 2 firewire/usb 2 enclosures from them and both work perfectly. I just waited until they had a sale or free shipping (pretty often) and they are great to deal with.

tavilach · Jun 24, 2005, 05:02 PM

Originally Posted by Krusty

Get a Combo FW400/USB 2.0 like This one (which matches the design theme of the PM G5) and costs $42 (though this site occasionally has it on sale for < $40).

FW800 is still rather expensive and would only be useable on a limited number of machines (Mac or PC) at this point. USB 2.0 is good to have only because so many PCs lack firewire. Can you tell I value breadth of compatibility more than pure raw speed ?

The upper bound of your new drive's speed wouldn't saturate the available bandwidth the FW800 anyway.

If you wanna spend even less, I'd recommend going FW over USB 2.0. Here is a good short read on the topic.

I hate to awaken a dead post, but I bought this little guy a short while after I started this thread, and I was wondering if you have one. It's gorgeous and works great, but there's something that's been bugging me for a while, now: The blue LED is so friggin' bright that it lights up the entire room when the lights are off, and it's just sort of a pain to have to turn it off all the time

. Was just wondering if it's just mine...

Krusty · Jun 24, 2005, 09:05 PM

No, I actually don't own it. I already had a case for the last several years that works fine so I didn't need to buy another. BUT, I do have my eye on that one if I ever need another case. As far as the LED, is there some way you can manually disconnect it ??

Glad it worked out though ... it really has a nice G5-y look about it and is (apparently) aluminum rather than the cheap-@ss plastic like the one I have. Actually, my plastic one has a shockingly bright green LED that blinks orange when its accessing the drive. Maybe the people who make these things think its cool or something.

tavilach · Jun 24, 2005, 09:11 PM

Originally Posted by Krusty

No, I actually don't own it. I already had a case for the last several years that works fine so I didn't need to buy another. BUT, I do have my eye on that one if I ever need another case. As far as the LED, is there some way you can manually disconnect it ??

Glad it worked out though ... it really has a nice G5-y look about it and is (apparently) aluminum rather than the cheap-@ss plastic like the one I have. Actually, my plastic one has a shockingly bright green LED that blinks orange when its accessing the drive. Maybe the people who make these things think its cool or something.

I seriously wish someone else on this forum had it, because the company seems to be a small one, and it wouldn't be far-fetched for them to have accidentally made an LED too strong on one of their enclosures. To help you understand, it's brighter than my Photon LED flashlight!

I may look into manually disconnecting it, but it doesn't look like that'd be easy.

(And yes, it feels like Aluminum

.)