[bbales]

I've been looking into a portable hard drive for use as backup -- want the portability to more easily back up my laptop. I can get a good enclosure (400 firewire only) for a sale price of $40. It says it accepts an IDE drive.

Choices on the IDE drive seem to be a little slim. Are there inherent advantages to a different kind of assembly (and I'm not even sure if those are possible, say using an ATA drive? Does this seem like a good idea at all, or will I be sorry in a year or so I didn't go the 400 or USB 2 route. At the moment, neither my desktop nor my laptop have firewire 800 or USB 2. The desktop is 5 years old and the laptop is 3 -- it's an original 12-in aluminum. Three years old today, as a matter of fact.

[hickey]

I've heard good things about external SATA drives, but I think you need an SATA card for the pbook. If you want an ATA drive, you need to get an ATA enclosure. No matter wha tkind fo drive you get, make sure you get a mathing and compatible enclosure.

and FW400 will be plenty fast.

[mduell]

A FW400 enclosure for $40 isn't a very good price; even Oxford based enclosures are under $30 every day.

First decide which size drive you want:
2.5" drives are smaller/lighter/more pocketable, generally can be run off bus power (no AC adapter needed), but are limited to 120GB and aren't as fast.
3.5" drives are larger/heavier/generally bigger than a pocket and need AC adapters, but they are faster and up to 500GB.

Now decide how you want to connect it:
USB2 - Fast enough for general usage, compatible with the most computers, very slow if you only have USB1
FW400 - Faster, good for Macs with USB1
FW800 - Faster still, available only on some Mac models (PowerMacs and PowerBooks)
SATA - Fastest (and least expensive) of them all, only available for 3.5" drives, few computers have external SATA ports but cards are cheap (if your computer has PCI slots (of any flavor) or a PC Card slot

Now decide what size drive you want. This is largely just a function of cost, so pick drive size or total cost for the drive and enclosure.

If you answer the 3 questions above I'll post some recommendations.

[ibookuser2]

IDE is a synonym for ATA. They are the same thing.