[dancingheart]

Can anyone recommend a quiet firewire external CD-RW or hard drive?

[tonton]

More details? How large a HD? How quiet? Basically you can get anything without a fan.

I'd recommend the GN series IBM 2.5" hard drives in an Oxford enclosure. That's about as quiet as you can get. The iPod is also nearly silent, and though it's more expensive, much smaller capacity and not as fast as the other drive, it has certain other "advantages".

[lucylawless]

I have a 40BG Maxtor drive that is virtually silent (virtually means that you can detect a low wine if you bend over and put your ear right on the thing)

My lab also has 2 80GB Maxtor drives that are quiet, but I can't vouch for exactly how quiet those are, because my lab has a lot of ambient noise

I've had experience with 2 QPS Que!Fire CD-RW drives, and they are absolutely silent. Of course, that goes for QPS's tech support, too. The way I see it, Que drives are about 10% cheaper than their competitors, but about 10% of the drives are lemons, and you're better off just eating the cost than dealing with QPS's service department. But they are certainly quiet drives.

[Metro]

OWC has Firewire HD's that do not have a fan. It is called 'OWC Mercury Elite Pro FireWire Storage'

here is the link: http://eshop.macsales.com/Catalog_Pa...&Template=

If that doesn't work you can go to their main page and look up Firewire HD Storage.
http://eshop.macsales.com/

I have followed the threads for sometime on this and it seems these are recommended. I plan on picking one up very soon myself. By the way I do not have anything to do with them, except as a future customer.

[Michael T. Doyle]

For my money, the dirt quietest external FW hard drives are VST's slimline portable drives. They're more expensive than full-height drives, but they are easily as silent as an iPod. I have a Cube and wanted a quiet backup drive, too. The VST has been perfect.

I had a Maxtor drive once. Next to a Cube it's fan sounded like a jet engine. I wouldn't recommend it.