[helpme]

I was just in circuit city, they have a 40 gb external usb 2.0/firewire drive for $79.99 after mail in rebates. That price seems awful good, are iomega drives decent. I am just using this to store mp3s and video. Mostly mp3s though.

[Frumpy]

Hey not bad, i work there and picked up the Western Digital 80gig 7200rpm Firewire external hd for my mac a couple weeks ago. I do a lot of video editing for business use, and it comes in handy. Cost me $180, so yours would be an excellent deal. Just make sure to check the speed and the brand name. And you can only return it within 14 days. Good luck.

[Simon]

I got a LaCie d2 120GB 7200RPM FireWire external disk with my new iMac and the disk rocks. It's very fast and it's nice and quiet (no fan! ). The only thing I don't like is that it doesn't have an on/off switch but tries to do it automatically based upon if the disk is mounted or not. This causes the disk to turn on after a reboot which I don't want because it's only a backup disk. But apart from that (I just pull the plug instead) it's a fine disk.

In case you want to see what other people say about a certian disk drive before you buy check the pages at xlr8yourmac. You can find reader reports on the hardware and even check to see if it works with your Mac. Very useful!

[macles]

Originally posted by helpme:
I was just in circuit city, they have a 40 gb external usb 2.0/firewire drive for $79.99 after mail in rebates. That price seems awful good, are iomega drives decent. I am just using this to store mp3s and video. Mostly mp3s though.

double check for compatibility and format before buying. I don't think the iMac has usb 2.0. I looked at the iomega web site and their desktop drives were formatted for pc. if it works for you - go for it. it sounds like a sweet deal.

[Jens Peter]

Originally posted by macles:
double check for compatibility and format before buying. I don't think the iMac has usb 2.0. I looked at the iomega web site and their desktop drives were formatted for pc. if it works for you - go for it. it sounds like a sweet deal.

But even if it's formatted for PC, cnt you just plug in the firewire connecter, and then use Disk Utility, select the Erase tab, select the drive, and then format it ti HFS+ ?
Or will it even not mount on the desktop ?

Jens Peter

[Simon]

Originally posted by Jens Peter:
But even if it's formatted for PC, cnt you just plug in the firewire connecter, and then use Disk Utility, select the Erase tab, select the drive, and then format it ti HFS+ ?
Or will it even not mount on the desktop ?

That's the way all my external FW drives have worked (they were all LaCie though). But some people claim certain drives need drivers. I don't see why.

[bwest3]

Originally posted by Simon:
That's the way all my external FW drives have worked (they were all LaCie though). But some people claim certain drives need drivers. I don't see why.

I'm almost certain that the newer iMacs, while running OS X will utilize the new Oxford 911 chip and this eliminates the need for most drivers. Fortunately I have a LaCie FW drive as well! Macs don't use USB 2.0,which has a transfer rate @480Mbps but FW gives a transfer rate of 400Mbps. USB 1.1 is only 1.5Mbps so definitely use firewire if capable!

Hope this helps!

[bradoesch]

Originally posted by bwest3:
USB 1.1 is only 1.5Mbps

If you're gonna give everything in mega bits, then USB 1.1 is 12 Mb (mega bits.) Although if you wrote it as 1.5 MB (mega byte), then you were correct.

[Simon]

Originally posted by bwest3:
Macs don't use USB 2.0,which has a transfer rate @480Mbps but FW gives a transfer rate of 400Mbps....

In theory USB2 should be a bit faster, but all realworld test up to now (check barefeats for example) have shown FW to be still faster to connect HDDs. I think an external FW disk (even more so if it's an external FW800 disk ) is about as fast as you can get with external disks as long as SCSI is not an option.