[hickey]

Due to a fairly tight budget, I'm thinking of buying a bare hard drive and putting it in an enclosure. But I don't really know where to start for this. I've heard great things about seagate drives, mainly due to their warranty. Any recommendations on enclosures, and any tips on putting one of these together. I'd like to have at least a 200GB drive, FW 800 would be ideal but I could settle with FW400. Thanks in advance.

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by hickey

Due to a fairly tight budget, I'm thinking of buying a bare hard drive and putting it in an enclosure. But I don't really know where to start for this. I've heard great things about seagate drives, mainly due to their warranty. Any recommendations on enclosures, and any tips on putting one of these together. I'd like to have at least a 200GB drive, FW 800 would be ideal but I could settle with FW400. Thanks in advance.

I haven't heard that there would be a significant speed advantage of FW800 to FW400 on external HDs.

I would go with Seagate, I'm actually considering buying the same combination that you are looking for. As far as the HD enclusares are concerned, newegg.com has a nice collection.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...SubCategory=92

I especially liked this one, although it comes at a premium for the looks:



http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817173003



-t

[phantomdragonz]

DAMN, I was hoping to find an answer here too...

anyways, i will share what I know....

I bought an external usb 2.0 and firewire enclosure and threw in a 80 gig drive, and it works great... I have it formatted as FAT32 so i can grab files from my friends pc's and read it on my mac, but i have run into a problem that it will not work with firewire, it will work great on my usb 2.0 card that I installed, but not so much with firewire...


I am also looking for roughly 200-350 gigs of storage in an external enclosure, although I am probably going to stick with a USB 2.0 enclosure because they are cheaper.. this brings me to my next question, is there a better IDE -> USB controller out there... like the Oxford 911 chipsets for firewire?

and, what is a good reliable drive, or are they all about the same?

Zach

[outsourced]

If you don't have a hard drive already, check around for specials on external drives. I recently bought an AcomData 250GB drive for $180 after rebate. It uses a Western Digital drive with an 8MB buffer and spins at 7200rpm. Got it at CompUSA. The case is a cool aluminum, fanless design with pushbutton backup.

So, for $180 I got a modern case, fast hard drive, and free Retrospect backup software.

As far as drives go: I prefer Seagate -- they offer a 5 yr. warranty. Maxtor is my second choice. I used to use only Maxtor, but have since switched to Seagate -- partly because Maxtor still only offers 3 yr. warranty. Otherwise, both are great drives. Never been a Western Digital fan, but my new external drive works great -- and it's QUIET!

Also, Newegg.com offers great products and quick shipping. However, check out fwdepot.com. They know firewire.

Just remember: You get what you pay for.

[sspire]

For a reliable source for enclosures, go to:
http://www.granitedigital.com

To follow the tangent with external hard drives:
Seagate is going to be your highest quality brand, but you'll pay for it because they're pricey. If money is no object. Go with Seagate. They have a solid and consistent reputation for well built drives and they have a five year warranty.

I personally am very happy with Western Digital. It's so quiet I look at the light indicator to make sure it's on and it has a rare feature of the power button being in the front. The Lacie and Porsche both eventually died. The first was so loud it may have been better to run it over with a car, the second seemed hot enough to cook an egg on.

Mind you this is my experience and different models run differently. In general, you're better off the later the model. Read this article for an extensive comparison:
http://www.tomshardware.com/mobile/20050407/

Be cautious with Lacie. LaCie is just a name on a case, it does not reflect what is inside the case. Lacie uses other manufacturers' drives inside its own casings including Toshiba, Western Digital, IBM, Sanyo, and Maxtor. So anyone else considering Lacie, please make sure you do your research on the model. This would account for the wide inconsistencies in reviews for Lacies.

I've always stayed away from Maxtor.
Too many reports on bad drives for the Maxtor brand:
http://jeff.binaryfeed.org/blog/view...k.php?the_id=6
http://www.macintouch.com/maxtor.html
http://www.garagegames.com/blogs/22440/7499
http://www.mentallyincontinent.com/m...pic&t=1585
http://reviews.cnet.com/Forums/5208-...sageID=1162063
http://www.xoxideforums.com/archive/topic/54448-1.html
http://www.eio.com/public/harddrv/0506.html
http://reviews.cnet.com/5208-7590-0....ssageID=328179
http://forum.pcstats.com/archive/index.php/t-14842.html
http://www.xltronic.com/mb/topic.php...amp;idxstart=0
http://direct-cnet.com.com/Maxtor_On...186_9-31121421
http://help.lockergnome.com/lofivers...hp/t31774.html

In the end, no matter what the brand, do your research on the specific model. The following is the most in-depth/thorough reviews of any place I know. Read one review and you'll see what I mean. If you're not familiar with the terminology, read the "Reference Guide" and you'll learn more then you realized you could know about drives:

http://www.storagereview.com/

More Reviews:
http://www.experts-exchange.com/Storage/
http://reviews.zdnet.co.uk/hardware/storage/

Originally Posted by phantomdragonz

I bought an external usb 2.0 and firewire enclosure and threw in a 80 gig drive, and it works great... I have it formatted as FAT32 so i can grab files from my friends pc's and read it on my mac, but i have run into a problem that it will not work with firewire, it will work great on my usb 2.0 card that I installed, but not so much with firewire...

I find it ineresting you formatted to a FAT32 if the drive is primarily for a Mac. I prefer to format Mac HFS+ because I don't want any file nameing restraints. Throw MacDrive or Transmac on the PC and everything is fine.

MacDrive 6.0.5.0
http://www.mediafour.com/products/macdrive6

For those dedicated Mac users who sometimes need to work with PCs.

MacDrive has long been the standard for Windows users to easily and seamlessly open, edit and save files from Mac-formatted disks, but now we are taking things a step further.

MacDrive 6 for Windows enables PC users to open, edit, and save files on Mac disks. You can even format Mac disks and burn Mac CDs and DVDs!

MacDrive 6 also expands on the ability to format Mac disks by enabling you to partition your hard drives with the MacDrive Disk Manager. MacDrive also protects your partitions from harm by Windows disk tools and warns you if your drives were not properly shut down.

Along with the ability to burn and partition, all the power MacDrive has added to your Windows PC is even better in MacDrive 6. We have dramatically increased the speed when dealing with large files sets, we have improved and simplified the control panel and we have expanded support for various Mac files types.

MacDrive is perfect for cross-platform offices, Windows users working with Mac-based clients, and students and educators using both Macs and PCs. MacDrive works with all your favorite programs including Microsoft Office, Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, QuarkXpress, AppleWorks and many more.

MacDrive software makes Mac disks act like normal PC disks, so it’s a great way to get files both from Macs to PCs and from PCs to Macs. MacDrive wins its awards for simplicity as well as power!

• Works with Windows XP, 2000, 2003 Server, Me, 98
• Read, writes and formats Mac disks
• Burns recordable and rewritable Mac CDs and DVDs (XP/2003/2000)
• Works on CDs, DVDs, hard drives, floppies, Zip, Jaz, ORB, SyQuest, and more
• Nothing to configure, nothing new to learn—it just works.
• 30-day "Love it or Return it" money-back guarantee

Works with
• Microsoft Office
• Word
• Excel
• Access
• FrontPage
• Powerpoint
• Microsoft Works
• AppleWorks/ClarisWorks
• QuarkXpress
• FileMaker Pro
• Adobe products
• Photoshop
• Illustrator
• PageMaker
• InDesign
• Corel Painter
• Macromedia products
• Digidesign Pro Tools
• Avid Media Composer
• and many more!

Upgrade Features:
-Fixed: File Name Maps were incorrectly converted to lower case
-Improved: MacDrive CD/DVD Creator now supports over 100 new CD/DVD drives
-Fixed: Problems accessing external hard disks on Athlon 64 systems -under Windows XP Service Pack 2
-Improved: Mac/PC partition conflict resolution

MacDrive 6 Review
http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/am...les/mediafour/

MacDrive 6 FAQ
http://forums.mediafour.com/forumdisplay.php?f=43

System Reqiurements:
- Microsoft® Windows XP, 2003 Server, 2000, Me, 98SE with Internet Explorer 6 (or newer)
-MacDrive works with all FireWire (IEEE1394a/b), USB 1.1/2.0, SCSI, IDE, Fibre Channel, parallel-port and other disk devices supported by Windows.
-Installation of MacDrive requires less than 10MB hard disk storage.
-Low density (400KB and 800KB) Mac disks are not accessible, due to floppy drive limitations.

TransMac
http://www.asy.com/scrtm.htm

[cakeandpie]

hi, i've got a semi-related question to the topic. i have both a PC and a powerbook, and I am about to get a firewire/usb combo drive. would it be possible to hook the drive up to the PC via usb and to the powerbook via firewire and have them both recognize it at the same time?

thanks!

[phantomdragonz]

I should note that the PC si my friends and I cant install stuff on it...

BUT THANKS you gave me exactly the info I wanted!

Zach

[jdogg99]

Originally Posted by cakeandpie

hi, i've got a semi-related question to the topic. i have both a PC and a powerbook, and I am about to get a firewire/usb combo drive. would it be possible to hook the drive up to the PC via usb and to the powerbook via firewire and have them both recognize it at the same time?

thanks!

Two computers cannot use one drive simultaneously. Although you would be using two separate interfaces, the actual drive cannot support two controllers. This would be a data corruption nightmare. I've seen networkable drives that might be close to what you're looking for. These are autonomous drives that connect through a router, and would always be available to computers over the network; I'm not sure about speed, but I'm guessing they'd be quite slow compared to a firewire/usb drive.