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reemas · Sep 29, 2004, 08:38 PM

i have a powerbook with a 80gb hard drive and its full. i need to get an external hard drive. i wanted to spend about $250 or less and since my powerbook has fw 800, i would like it to use that.

that being said, there are so many hard drives and i'm just confused. i know lacie makes a few, but even their drives has several version of the same thing.

i'm most concerned with quality and warranty. any suggestions i could look into?

thanks everyone.

gsxrboy · Sep 29, 2004, 09:37 PM

The LaCie d2/d2 extreme ones are most dandy, get the triple interface ones, they provide connection for everything..

The FW800 on them runs very nice

reemas · Sep 29, 2004, 09:39 PM

whats the difference between the d2 series and the Big Disk series?

they seem identical. am i missing something?

SEkker · Sep 29, 2004, 09:43 PM

I had the same issue. I decided to go with a $200 GB Seagate HD from Fry's (only $60 AR thru Sept 30), comes with a 5 year warranty. I then purchased a FW800 external case from OWC, comes with a 1 or 2 year warranty.

Everyone else seems to have a 1-2 year warranty on external HDs, so I figured this was better.

Whole thing runs ~$170 for a 200 GB external FW800 HD.

reemas · Sep 29, 2004, 09:54 PM

the seagate was internal and you just bought a case for it? is this hard to install?

shortyes · Sep 29, 2004, 11:31 PM

No it is very easy. Basically it is an enclosure. You pop it open, plug in the HDD and close it and then screw it shut. Pick either USB2 or firewire depending on the case and then plug it into the mac/Pc of choice and it should auto detect.

I did the same, $68 AR 200gb HDD + $20 enclosure and I got me a portable 200gb driver for 80 dollars. Can't go wrong.

reemas · Sep 30, 2004, 12:09 AM

what enclosure is so cheap?

macaddict0001 · Sep 30, 2004, 12:32 AM

I would recommend lacie no hassle with enclosures huge amounts of storage and a decent price. have you seen the one which holds a terabyte of data. Fairly small too. which is obviously important with a powerbook.

reemas · Sep 30, 2004, 12:33 AM

i like the lacie drives but was hoping for more than a 1 year warranty on a hard drive. seem's like 1 year is standard though.

macaddict0001 · Sep 30, 2004, 01:06 AM

hard drives last for a while if they don't come dead they will last for a good 4-5 years warrenty is almost irrelevent.

SEkker · Sep 30, 2004, 09:37 AM

I disagree on the warranty comments. We've had about 5 HDs fail in the past 2 years, almost all would have fallen under a 3 year warranty (and were covered by a 1 year, so we ate the costs of the replacement drives).

I agree that the difference between 3 and 5 years is not very significant -- at the moment, a drive that's 4.5 years old that fails is not likely to be mainstream. But that will change as the manufacturer's hit the limits to current storage technologies.

External cases can be cheap, usually the less expensive do not include a power switch onboard (which I find very annoying). I like to keep my externals off when not in use, and to have to plug them in to turn them on can be a real pain.

FW800 cases are pretty pricey right now, so the sweet spot are the FW400 and/or USB 2 cases.

Snake · Sep 30, 2004, 12:19 PM

I use an enclosure I bought on newegg.com with both my Sony DVD burner and old Western Digital PC harddrive. It uses USB2, which is faster than regular FW400.

Anywho, I throw my vote in for just getting a harddrive and buying an enclosure. Works very well in my opinion, plenty of FW800 enclosures out there too.

Snake · Sep 30, 2004, 12:27 PM

Couldn't find any FW800 enclosures on Newegg,

macaddict0001 · Sep 30, 2004, 03:21 PM

Originally posted by SEkker:
I disagree on the warranty comments. We've had about 5 HDs fail in the past 2 years, almost all would have fallen under a 3 year warranty (and were covered by a 1 year, so we ate the costs of the replacement drives).

I agree that the difference between 3 and 5 years is not very significant -- at the moment, a drive that's 4.5 years old that fails is not likely to be mainstream. But that will change as the manufacturer's hit the limits to current storage technologies.

External cases can be cheap, usually the less expensive do not include a power switch onboard (which I find very annoying). I like to keep my externals off when not in use, and to have to plug them in to turn them on can be a real pain.

FW800 cases are pretty pricey right now, so the sweet spot are the FW400 and/or USB 2 cases.

I apperently have had a very different experience the youngest hard drive I had go was around 4.5 years.

reemas · Sep 30, 2004, 09:18 PM

how will i know if the hardrive i buy, I.E. the seagate, will fit in the case i buy?

also is it faster to buy a ready made case and hd solution? will mixing a different brand hard drive and different brand case slow things down??

thanks all.

SEkker · Sep 30, 2004, 10:42 PM

The cases designed for housing a separate HD pretty much work with any HD of that specified size. (3.5" vs 2.5").

FW400 vs FW800 vs USB 2 is the main issue.

reemas · Sep 30, 2004, 10:52 PM

what did you mean by 3.5" vs. 2.5"? im not sure i follow that part.

SpaceMonkey · Oct 1, 2004, 08:04 AM

Originally posted by reemas:
what did you mean by 3.5" vs. 2.5"? im not sure i follow that part.

Desktop computer hard drives are an industry standard size (3.5"), and laptop hard drives are also industry standard (2.5"). External enclosures will have to fit one or the other, and they will say explicitly which type of hard drive they fit.

amazing · Oct 1, 2004, 11:05 AM

Originally posted by Snake:
I use an enclosure I bought on newegg.com with both my Sony DVD burner and old Western Digital PC harddrive. It uses USB2, which is faster than regular FW400.

Here's some tests of USB 2.0 versus fw400 and fw800 on powerbooks and G5 desktop. The USB 2.0 performance on Macs is dismal:

http://barefeats.com/usb2.html

Firewire is the way to go. There are plenty of cheap fw400 enclosures out there, and prices are coming down on fw800 enclosures.