[Bob Barlen]

I’ve been doing some reading on Firewire Hard Drives, because I need to purchase one for file storage and video editing. I would like a drive that is fast enough to capture digital video in Final Cut Pro. I’ve read the articles on barefeats.com and xlr8yourmac.com, but some of them seem older, and I want to make sure I’ve got the most up to date info before I buy.

Basically, I want to determine what the ultimate external Firewire HD is as far as performance goes, and also what offers the best value and a manageable case size too. These are some other issues I’ve read about:

1. Oxford 911 Bridge
How important is the Oxford 911 bridge? The benchmarks on xlr8yourmac show that it performs faster, but does it provide a noticeable speed bump, or is it just a marketing gimmick? Is a 7200 rpm drive more important than this bridge? Will a non Oxford bridge perform fine for capturing digital video?

2. 5400 vs 7200 rpm drive
This obviously has to affect the performance, but again, does it affect the usability of the drive? Could I have a 5400 rpm drive and live my life happily, capturing digital video to it without any slowdown?

3. ATA/100 Interface
Do all drives/enclosures have this? Is it important? Will an ATA/100 interface (as opposed to an ATA/66) cause significant speed increases?

4. Enclosure kit vs. all-in-one drive
Is it better to buy a kit and install my own hard drive? Are there significant cost savings? What kit is the best? Here are a few I’ve read about:

OWC Mercury Elite Pro FireWire Enclosure – $175 Canadian ($106.99 USD)
with Oxford 911 IDE/Firewire bridge http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/firewire/...1_casekit.html

Pyro Drive Kit - $179 Canadian http://www.adstech.com/products/PYRO...sp?pid=API-800

Lava Drive Enclosure - $145 Canadian http://www.lavalink.com/PRODUCTS/1394/firedrive.html

All-In-One (drive included)

Trans Intl Firewire Drives http://www.transintl.com/store/categ...m?Category=160
Which are available in 7200 and 5400 models.

There are also the cobra+ firewire drives, at http://www.ezq.com/1-714-694-0031/products02a.htm
Which run at 7200 with an ATA/100 interface.

OWC sells their drives all together too, http://eshop.macsales.com/Catalog_It...em=OWCMEFW80GB
which are 7200 and 5400 also.

Maxtor External IEEE Hard Drives - $439 Canadian (60GB) http://www.maxtor.com/products/Exter...DV/default.htm
These are more expensive than the Lacie drives, and they’re 7200.

Lacie – http://www.lacie.com/products/produc...C60090278D3ED0
These drives seem to be reasonably priced, but I’ve seen them in real life and the enclosures are huge. How does the performance compare?

To open yet another can of worms, I’m going to pose the question of what hat is the best bus powered portable drive? Barefeats has a good article on this topic at http://www.barefeats.com/fire24.html

As far as small / “portable” bus powered drives, Trans International has some for sale that look good. Lacie also sells the “pocket drive” line, which seems pricey. Since these only spin at 4800 rpm (except for the very expensive large capacity drives) I don’t think I’ll be getting one of these in any case, due to the price. My thinking on this is that I should buy a huge capacity drive in a bigger enclosure for now, and then I’ll hopefully be able to get an iPod to haul files that are only a gig or two. Of course, then I think that I should spend a bit more, get a good 40 or 60 gig small, bus powered disk, and not need to worry.

Anyway, I’ve rambled, but I would appreciate people’s comments and opinions on the drives listed here (and others that they’ve had good or bad experiences with)

Bob Barlen

[raferx]

I've had excellent experience with Lacie's 7200 rpm FW HD's, they are heavy-duty, and have an excellent data transfer rate. Use mine for back-up, capture (in a pinch)and just general portable use. Great drive, I highly recommend them. Also, the power supply is separate, which I like, they have two FW ports, and a USB port... which came in handy a few times.**

[PeteWK]

You could probably scrimp on one of your section numbers and still be alright. But if you cut back too many places, you may be sorry. The thing is that every little bit helps. Add together ATA 100, 7200 RPM, 911 bridge and on-board cache (though almost all drives now have 2 mb standard) and you have an excellent drive for what you want to accomplish. The all in one versus kit is pretty much a push. The case always starts out life as a kit and somebody has to put a drive in it. It could be argued that the Maxtor has some kind of advantage because it's a manufacturers drive, but who knows who makes their cases. Plus the fact that Maxtor drives don't seem to have the best reliability.

You're better off getting what you think looks good next to your computer and filling it with a drive that both specs out well and has done well in testing (there are several magazines and sites that test them. I went with an IBM drive in a TransIntl.com case and have been very happy.

PeteWK

The Maxtor retail units use an LSI bridge board and provide crappy performance for your $$$. Much better to get a drive kit and put one together yourself (very simple, just like installing a drive in your Mac).

Here's the results of a WD 80BB in an ADS Pyro Drive Kit.
http://www.vdpc.org/firewire.gif

[G4ME]

It seem that you need to fits to your needs.
do you transefer large files from computer to computer across town or across the room. Across the room use CAT 5 and set up a net work with a nother firewire drive, but if its across town and you have to stick the drive in your poket then go with the best size to compacity ratio, my advice LaCie is very reliable, been in the Fire wire market since the incorporation.

But if you just need to transfer files for Hard core storage, buil your own, then you know what you are puting in your computer, a giant 120 gb drive in a blazing fast 911 drive.

Don't they have dual firewire enclosures? that way it would probalbly be cheaper to buy two 60gb drives then a 120gb drive right now.

just buy a drive that fits your need

[zigzag]

If you've done the reading at barefeats.com, you can see that it all depends. For instance, they showed in one test that the Maxtor 3000DV outperformed all other FW drives on digital video (the tester speculated that it might be opimized for DV and promised a follow-up review, but it has yet to appear).

I don't believe that Maxtor drives have any special reliability problems as far as mechanics are concerned - they made some bad ones a few years ago but so did IBM and WD. As far as I can tell, all of the major manufacturers are making reliable drives these days.

That doesn't mean, however, that their ready-made drives are always compatible. However, they have a fairly extensive support site, and in light of the number of drives they sell, I have seen surprisingly few complaints. I would definitely buy one at the right price. WD has also just come out with a new line of 7200 RPM FW drives.

Most of the complaints I've seen (and this pertains to other brands, not just Maxtor) are the result of people trying to chain FW devices. Keep things simple, just use one FW device per port, and things seem to work better.

I don't know if the Oxford chip is essential as long as the drive uses a comparable chip. According to barefeats.com, the EZQuest drives use a different chip, but perform as well as the Oxford-based drives.

Based on what I've read, if you want to capture and edit video, 7200 RPM is preferable. However, many people use 5400 RPM without problems. The consensus seems to be that if you rely on DV for a living, you should go with 7200, but for the hobbyist, 5400 will do. And 5400 RPM is fine for storing DV.

I would note that the Maxtor and WD drives don't have power switches. I don't know for sure but my impression is that they eliminated the switches because people turning the drives on and off while they were hooked up to FW ports was causing problems. But this is mostly speculation on my part from reading a few threads. There is a comment at the Maxtor support site that suggests that it's preferable to just leave the drives plugged in and powered and to just let them spin down when not in use. Any one else know anything about this?

Some of the larger boxes have fans, built-in power supplies, power switches, etc. The reports haven't indicated that it makes much difference either way, so it seems to come down to personal preference. Also, some boxes lie flat, while others are vertical, while others can go both ways. Obviously, some are smaller than others.

I've seen the OWC enclosure at caldrives.com for $99. The best prices I've seen on IDE drives are at newegg.com. I don't think two 60 GB drives would be cheaper than one 120 GB drive - the 120 GB drives are getting cheaper by the week, and you'd have to buy 2 enclosures.

One advantage of buying your own enclosure is that it'd be easier to change the drive in the future.

[Bob Barlen]

Hi Guys,

Thanks for all the tips so far. I think that I'm deciding between a Lacie drive and the OWC drive. The Lacie drives seem to have ATA 100/ 7200 rpm / 2 MB cache, the only thing missing is the 911 chipset.

Can anyone recommend a drive with ATA 100 / 7200 rpm / 2+ MB cache and the 911 chipset? The OWC Mercury Elite seems to have this - do any other drives?

I'm still reading and searching, thanks for all the help so far!

[ 03-12-2002: Message edited by: Bob Barlen ]

[raferx]

Originally posted by Bob Barlen:
<STRONG>Hi Guys,

Thanks for all the tips so far. I think that I'm deciding between a Lacie drive and the OWC drive. The Lacie drives seem to have ATA 100/ 7200 rpm / 2 MB cache, the only thing missing is the 911 chipset.

Can anyone recommend a drive with ATA 100 / 7200 rpm / 2+ MB cache and the 911 chipset? The OWC Mercury Elite seems to have this - do any other drives?

I'm still reading and searching, thanks for all the help so far!

[ 03-12-2002: Message edited by: Bob Barlen ]</STRONG>

The Elite is a great drive, a friend has one, and I asked hime about it. He said, small, fast, reliable... he has the 80Gb model.

[milhaus]

hey bob,
Since you're in TO, would you be interested in buying a used 60 GIG Lacie HD in SE2100 casing. The drive is 7200 RPMS, and fast - I thought they _did_ use the 911 chip, but maybe I'm wrong - this drive was a replacement from Lacie for an older FW HD which had a problem with the bridge, and it was one of the newer drives. So it was new about 8 months ago, and hasn't had any problems whatsoever. it performed about twice as well as the old drive. I don't believe there is a USb port in this one, but there is 2 FW ports. I'm selling for $300CDN, no taxes. Let me know via my mail or this forum if you're interested.
M.

[er1c]

Hi Bob - I have been doing the same shopping dance for firewire drives. I came to MACNN today to ask about VST vs OWC drives. They have such different prices for similar specs! I really like the OWC 120 gig drive, $329.00 US. No fan, relatively small and much less expensive than the VST. OWC says only VST is comperable in speed, which is my question. Good luck and thanks for a good post with excellent questions and information.

<font color = green> er1c </font>

[Macola]

Originally posted by er1c:
<STRONG>Hi Bob - I have been doing the same shopping dance for firewire drives. I came to MACNN today to ask about VST vs OWC drives. They have such different prices for similar specs! I really like the OWC 120 gig drive, $329.00 US. No fan, relatively small and much less expensive than the VST. OWC says only VST is comperable in speed, which is my question. Good luck and thanks for a good post with excellent questions and information.

<font color = red> er1c </font></STRONG>

I have an OWC Mercury Elite 80G and have been very happy with it. You get the same critical components (i.e., IDE drive and bridge) that you'd get with a name brand, but just in a less fancy case.