[krb]

I'm looking at getting one of the following three external firewire hard drives. In any case, I'll get a 7200 RPM, 80 GB model.

Maxtor
Lacie
Ezquest

I've been able to look at the manufacturers for the Maxtor and Lacie drives, but I cannot find the website for the EZquest drive. I'd like to see the tech specs more closesly.

I've alreadly searched through the forums here and found out quite a bit. From all the posts I've read, none of these three drives stands out above any other. MacWorld Reviews gives the Maxtor Drive a 4.5 rating and from other posts, I gather that the Lacie drive is noisier, but I guess that all in the ear of the beholder. For looks, the Maxtor and EZquest drives are the sharpest and would go the best with my Graphite iMac, but looks are at the bottom of my list of priorities, however, it is on the list.

This seems like a topic that has been tossed around about every couple of months, but any more suggestions would be helpful. I'm basically looking for extra storage for DV editing, playing around with OS X, and having a partition for backups.

Thanks,
krb

[cdhostage]

The Maxtor 5400 rpm 75 GB was bad for me. Croaked after three months and lost a good deal of my archived data. I don't know about the 7200 rpm drive but I would niot usggest getting the Maxtor.

[Macola]

Ditto on Maxtor. I have a 40G external, replaced the first drive because of the "red light" issue, and the replacement drive keeps spinning down in OS X for no reason. No solution yet (see other post).

[krb]

Okay, thanks for the info. I've gone back and searched a little harder and of the drives that seem to give the most problems, Maxtor is implicated far too often.

So, Maxtor is now out of the running. I have now discovered, after altering my search criteria, that there is another drive to be considered by Transintl.com.

At this point, LaCie is out too because I'm now trying to decide between the Transintl.com drive and the EZQuest Cobra drive. The Transintl uses the Oxford 911 chipset and the EZQuest uses Ultra DMA 66 technology. Both of these types of drives seem to support faster sustained transfer speeds. I'm just wondering what the difference is between them.

I did find the website for EZQuest (www.ezq.com) and both EZQuest and Transintl and both sites seemed to offer more complete technical information about their drives than either Maxtor or LaCie -- at least in my opinion.

So, any further tips/suggestions on either of these two drives (or others) would be very helpful.

Thanks,
krb

[Cipher13]

Do it yourself; get an external enclosure which uses the Oxford 911 bridge, and get an 80 gig 7200 RPM Seagate Barracuda IV.

[MacAgent]

My Maxtor works just fine.

[krb]

I had considered getting an enclosure and adding a drive, but I wasn't even sure where to begin. But I've done more research and concluded that the Seagate drive would be a good option. Now I just have to figure out which enclosure to get. I've looked at OWC and found the OWC Mercury Elite Pro FireWire Enclosure for a 3.5" drive. I've found a few others, but they put the price well above $300. What other enclosures with the Oxford 911 chipset are recommended?

Is this route very complicated? I've replaced the HD in a few Macs in the past. It also appears that the enclosure and the drive both come with their own software. Am I heading for software conflicts? Should I get some other type of drive utility like FWD Hard Disk Toolkit?

Thanks,
krb

[Macola]

Originally posted by krb:
<STRONG> I've looked at OWC and found the OWC Mercury Elite Pro FireWire Enclosure for a 3.5" drive. I've found a few others, but they put the price well above $300. What other enclosures with the Oxford 911 chipset are recommended?</STRONG>

I've had good experiences with OWC in general, and I'm considering replacing my Maxtor external with a custom-built drive. The latest in a long line of problems with the Maxtor is the red light problem is back, mostly when using iMovie in OS X. I'll probably go with OWC's enclosure but haven't decided whether it's worth salvaging the drive from the Maxtor case or not. Apparently they're difficult to remove.

[HouseSold]

Recently added a TDK VeloCD 24x10x40 CDRW to a case from Cooldrives at: http://www.cooldrives.com/fir13oxcden.html

Good price, no tax and fair shipping. Works excellent and noticed speed difference while plugging in an ATA Maxtor 40 gb ($99 at Costco) to move data.

Total cost of Drive and Firewire 911 Case = $207

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I have assembled several combos of enclosures and drives.

Also ordered another Firewire case from Compuvest at: http://www.compuvest1.com/engine/default800.asp?56426

Great price ($68) for firewire case (bought from Compuvest before).

This Compuvest case has no fan and I feel it is un-neccessary for most current CDRW drives.

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Best Deal of all for another 911 firewire enclosure with CDRW was here: http://www.caldrives.com/Merchant2/m...41040sanyo-pci

24x10x40 Sanyo in Firewire 911 enclosure (I know chipset is more useful in HD's than in optical drives) and comes with FREE (no charge) PCI-firewire card ($40 value)

Speak to Walter and mention us at MacNN

This is the current best already assembled package/price/performance firewire 24x10x40 CDRW.

Total cost $189 for firewire CDRW plus shipping.
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I have used the Caldrive CDRW with OSX.1.2 and iTunes 2.03 and is totally working for $189 and is being used constantly.

The other Firewire 911 case (Cooldrives.com) now has an 80gb Maxtor 7200 drive that Staples price-matched Googlegear for $162 and then took off $25 for coupon code 70911 (good thru 1-04-2002), so an 80gb Maxtor external drive in firewire 911 case.

Total cost $247.


Hope this helps someone