[galt606]

Have a Pismo with 20 GB HD (thanks Apple for the free upgrade and hassle free replacement of older machine). Anyway, that's full and I'm sick of burning CDs so I can swap data. I want an external drive, obviously Firewire. What should I look for when buying a HD? I'm pretty inexperienced when it comes to hardware.

[Cipher13]

Consider a 7200 rpm hard drive in an external FireWire enclosure; you can buy it as a package, or both items seperately.

Hard drive wise I recommend the Seagate Barracuda IV - 7200rpm, quietest drive on the market, damn fast - up to 80 gigs, I think.

As for the enclosure, make sure it uses the Oxford 911 FireWire chipset.

[Paul S]

I agree with Cipher. The only downside to that option is it's not portable. Cases for 5400 rpm and 7200 rpm drives need their own power supply. There are portable FW drives out there that get their power from the FireWire port. They are slower (4200 rpm) and much more expensive for a much smaller capacity. But if you need portable with your laptop, that might be the way to go. LaCie makes some nice portable drives.

[silverlode]

How much money do you have to spend? If you have say $300 or $400, Get one of the "pocket" drives made by VST/Smartdisk, Lacie, etc. Their small and draw power from the Firewire port. What the others are referring to is purchasing an internal IDE drive and mounting it in an external Firewire enclosure, which is also common.

I have one of the VST drives and for portability nothing beats it.