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headbirth · Jul 20, 2007, 11:06 AM

Hi,

I'm looking for a small portable bootable external HD, ~250GB, bus-powered, firewire for use with my MacBook Pro.

Anyone have any suggestions for something similar to this?

amazing · Jul 20, 2007, 11:43 AM

checkout the barefeats.com review:

Three Best Notebook Drives for the MacBook Pro

headbirth · Jul 20, 2007, 01:43 PM

Looking for an EXTERNAL drive.

amazing · Jul 20, 2007, 02:11 PM

Once again, checkout the article (especially before posting back...) These are tested as external drives and the cases are linked in the article. The cases look great with the Oxford 924 chip.

Barefeats.com evaluates HDs in external cases because of the difficulties (possibility of voiding warranty) in replacing the internal drive. I guess they don't have a MB where replacing the internal drive is easy--in any case, they say their tests are always worthy reading.

tomrock · Jul 21, 2007, 07:53 AM

I like the clear plastic cases Macsales offers OWC: Apple Mac G4 upgrades, Laptop Batteries, Memory, Drives

Click the Firewire or Hard Drive tabs.

hamertime · Jul 23, 2007, 12:56 PM

I shopped around for the same thing, and the one I've decided on is the MyBook drive. Seems to be the cheapest for the amount of features I want. My boyfriend got one a month or two ago and he loves it.

tomrock · Jul 24, 2007, 08:52 AM

Is the MyBook bus powered? I didn't think so.

highstakes · Jul 24, 2007, 12:02 PM

Originally Posted by hamertime

I shopped around for the same thing, and the one I've decided on is the MyBook drive. Seems to be the cheapest for the amount of features I want. My boyfriend got one a month or two ago and he loves it.

A family member uses one of those as well, best bang for the buck.

UNTeMac · Jul 24, 2007, 11:25 PM

Originally Posted by tomrock

Is the MyBook bus powered? I didn't think so.

Is the sarcasm necessary? I don't think so.

Obi Wan's Ghost · Jul 25, 2007, 01:03 PM

What's the best external drive with an eSata interface?

JustinHorne · Jul 25, 2007, 04:39 PM

I'd have to agree about the Mybook being the best value, I got my 500 gb for 129... That said, it isn't bus powered. When you find the cost difference though, you might see it isn't a huge deal to be non bus powered. That said, perhaps your situation requires no external plugin, at which point, disregard this.

hamertime · Jul 25, 2007, 05:41 PM

Originally Posted by Obi Wan's Ghost

What's the best external drive with an eSata interface?

I keep seeing that on different drives, and I'm curious...what is eSata?

Obi Wan's Ghost · Jul 25, 2007, 10:51 PM

Originally Posted by hamertime

I keep seeing that on different drives, and I'm curious...what is eSata?

external SATA of course! It has the same data transfer speed of 3Gb/s SATA-300. It's peak transfer speed is well faster than Firewire 800. The downside is it can't power an external drive so an external power supply is needed for HDDs.

SierraDragon · Jul 26, 2007, 12:20 AM

Real world eSATA overall throughput is a bit faster than FW800, but not by a huge amount. FW800 is an excellent external mass storage connection methodology. Barefeats.com has tests. Avoid USB 2 which sucks.

Personally I avoid bargains on RAM or mass storage. IMO (most of the time) data security is worth top quality.

-Allen Wicks

Obi Wan's Ghost · Jul 26, 2007, 05:02 AM

Originally Posted by SierraDragon

Real world eSATA overall throughput is a bit faster than FW800, but not by a huge amount.

Because most files we transfer don't saturate Firewire 400's bandwidth let alone 800's or eSATA's. The files that make the difference most noticeable are large video files multiple-gigabytes in size. I wish they would incorporate eSATA bus powering.

hamertime · Jul 26, 2007, 03:29 PM

Okay, so what you're saying is that eSATA is faster than firewire, even if by just a little bit -- BUT USB sucks in general. Thing is, there are two versions of the MyBook that are available: eSATA with a USB 2.0 connection, which is cheaper, and plain old firewire 400, which is more expensive. Between a superfast interface with a slow connection and just a pretty fast connection, which would be faster in the end?

Originally Posted by SierraDragon

Personally I avoid bargains on RAM or mass storage. IMO (most of the time) data security is worth top quality.

After having 2 hard drives fail on me in less than a year, I definitely agree. Being a college student kind of gets in the way of buying myself top quality data security, though.

shifuimam · Jul 26, 2007, 03:52 PM

Originally Posted by hamertime

After having 2 hard drives fail on me in less than a year, I definitely agree. Being a college student kind of gets in the way of buying myself top quality data security, though.

Then don't buy a MyBook. Get a Seagate drive and put it in a good case with a good FW chipset. The drive will come with a five-year warranty, which is the longest warranty available on any consumer-grade hard drive.

Most MyBook models have one-year warranties. Only the high-end (more costly) models have a three-year warranty, which is still beat by Seagate.

There are several threads about this in the Consumer Hardware subform - check them out if you get a chance; there's lots of info in there.

<edit>
USB doesn't "suck in general". You'll get very similar performance out of USB 2.0 and FW400. If all the computers you have that would use an external drive have USB 2.0, but not all have FW400, get a USB 2.0 enclosure (or, at the very least, a dual-interface enclosure with both connections).
</edit>

CharlesS · Jul 26, 2007, 04:03 PM

Originally Posted by Obi Wan's Ghost

What's the best external drive with an eSata interface?

The best external drive with an eSATA interface is a Seagate internal drive that you put inside a good quality enclosure that has eSATA ports on it.

If the enclosure supports FireWire, you want to get one that uses an Oxford chipset for the ATA/FireWire bridge. For eSATA, it doesn't matter at all, because eSATA is just SATA with another connector type, so no bridge is necessary.

That said, this enclosure linked to by the BareFeats article looked very nice. It's expensive, though, because of the FireWire 400 and 800 ports. If you just want eSATA, you can get a cheap eSATA-only or eSATA-USB 2.0 enclosure on Newegg, because the lack of a need for a bridge chipset means that cheap enclosures are just fine for eSATA. The only things you need to worry about in that situation are heat dissipation and fan noise.

hamertime · Jul 26, 2007, 05:20 PM

Wow. I didn't realize how extensively this topic had already been discussed. Sorry for making you guys repeat what you've already said a million times before.

I've now gone from almost having my mind made up to being back at square one. Glad I didn't buy something I'd regret, though. Thanks!

hamertime · 05:52 PM

(oops, double post)

Simon · Jul 26, 2007, 07:35 PM

Originally Posted by shifuimam

<edit>
USB doesn't "suck in general". You'll get very similar performance out of USB 2.0 and FW400...
</edit>

I have yet to see a single external HD that comes close to getting equal performance over USB2 compared to FW400. And let's not even get started on FW800. In term of performance you can make an argument for eSATA over FW, but the only thing going for USB2 is price and availability. Performance definitely isn't.

hamertime · Jul 27, 2007, 11:03 AM

Okay, sorry I'm a noob: I have one more question. I'm finding enclosures with an actual eSATA port on them, which should suggest that there are computers that have a port for an eSATA cable, right? Is the Macbook Pro one of them?

Simon · Jul 27, 2007, 11:20 AM

You'd need an eSATA ExpressCard/34 to use such a drive on a MBP. Here's one (with review).