I want to buy a Lacie external FW HD. Currently I am eyeing the 250GB FW Porsche. 160GB is not big enough for my needs and so the next step up is 250GB.
Anyways I wanted to know if anyone knew the drive manufacturer and chipset model used in Lacie drives? I heard the good chipset was the Oxford 911 or something like that, does this lacie have it? Also- is there anything preventing me from way down the line buying a bigger HD and popping it in? I don't imagine I would do this (FW400 would probably be outdated by then, etc) but was just curious anyways.
I have read many conflicting opinions about Lacie's drives- but from what I can tell the biggest problems happen with the Big Disk RAID products they sell because of heat issues? I don't intend on having this drive plugged in or even running that often (only time I'd connect it would be to do periodic full-disk backups and if needed to restore from those backups, plus ocassional file-dumping on a "junk drawer" partition for storage) so I don't think I will have problems with overheating. Nor do I need extreme performance since it's just a backup.
Lastly do you think it's worth it to get the d2, for reliability, aesthetic, or connectivity reasons? I know I have to get a drive with firewire because I want a bootable backup of my Powerbook- I am not sure if I should get a dual-option USB2.0/FW because I plan on using to back up a Windows PC as well. The PC does have Firewire but not sure if USB would be superior or if USB would be required for bootability on the PC. It's quite a bit more expensive and personally I'm a little more partial to the Porshe design than the d2 design... alas why am I so vain?
I am aware I can probably do this cheaper by buying an enclosure and a disk separately but honestly I like the look of the lacies. And I am willing to pay a little more for that, not trying to save as much money as I can. I found the 250GB FW Porsche for 148 shipped at newegg, that's a pretty good price I think. Unless you guys know where I can get it cheaper?
P.S. with these multi-connection option disks, is is possible to hook it up via more than 1 method at a time? For example if I connected it to my powerbook via FW800 and to my PC via USB2.0- could I access the drive from both computers simultaneously or would it take one connection with priority over the other?
Ruahrc
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