[markw10]

I am going to be purchasing two external hard drives and want usb2.0 as well as firewire 400/800 and I want something compact. One of these will be used with my laptop and I want something compact that I can take on the go with me on my laptop case. The other will be used for hard drive backups and I want it small so it can fit inside a fireproof safe.
So far what I'm most interested in is the Lacie Rugged All Terrain drives, specifically their 120gb or newer 160gb drive. What are opinions of this?
Since I'm buying two I"m looking for the best deals I can find. Is it cheaper if I buy a good drive and then a good firewire 400/800 usb2.0 enclosure? Will this save a lot of money and if I go this route what is a good drive to go with as well as a good enclosure? It's important to have these features but be compact as well as rugged.

[BZ]

OWC: Apple Mac G4 upgrades, Laptop Batteries, Memory, Drives (OWC) makes some good ones.

BZ

[mduell]

My first question would be do you really need FW800? It's certainly available, but it carries a significant price premium over FW400 (which itself carries a price premium over USB2) and the smaller 2.5" disks generally can't saturate FW400 anyway.

First an enclosure:
$115 bus powered FW800/FW400/USB2 enclosure
$29 bus powered FW400/USB2 enclosure
$8 bus powered USB2 enclosure

Then a drive:
160GB Hitachi for $125 (3 year warranty) or 160GB Seagate for $165 (5 year warranty)
120GB Samsung for $80 (3 year warranty) or 120GB Seagate for $100 (5 year warranty)

For the drive you put in your safe, how small does it really need to be? By using a 3.5" drive (enclosure size approx 5"x8"x2") you can save a lot of money (and/or get a lot more storage space) than a 2.5" drive (enclosure size approx 3"x5"x1"). If you need to go 2.5", then see the above options; if you can go 3.5", let me know and I'll post some links.

Unless you plan on dropping your hard drives a lot (but from less than 3 feet), I don't think there's much value in that "rugged" drive.

[OwlBoy]

Hello! mduell, I am interested in USB2 Enclosures like you listed there, but for 3.5" drives. Any recommendations? Bus powered USB would be the best. Thanks for your imput, I really value it.

-Owl

[mduell]

Originally Posted by OwlBoy 

Hello! mduell, I am interested in USB2 Enclosures like you listed there, but for 3.5" drives. Any recommendations? Bus powered USB would be the best. Thanks for your imput, I really value it.

I don't know of any, and quite frankly I doubt any exist. 3.5" drives require ~10-15W to spin up and most Firewire ports only supply 5-10W max, so there's little incentive to build them (iMacs and MacBook Pros are in the 7-8W range, IIRC). As I understand it FW lacks the self-protection circuitry that most USB chipsets have, so it's easy to fry the port by trying to draw too much power.