[Mac Hammer Fan]

Is there anyone who has bought the iomega 500 GB external harddisk with triple interface?
Is this drive fast? Does it have an on/out button?
Is the drive quiet?
Does it produce a lot of heat?
Can someone tell me if firewire is much slower than the internal SATA of a Powermac Dual G5?
TIA

[mduell]

I think it's safe to assume it has a power switch. Heat production should be mild, but I wouldn't put it in an enclosed space.

Originally Posted by Mac Hammer Fan 

Can someone tell me if firewire is much slower than the internal SATA of a Powermac Dual G5?

Yes, in terms of both bandwidth and latency.

[Mac Hammer Fan]

And what about the USB/SATA version?
I assume SATA is much faster?

[mduell]

Originally Posted by Mac Hammer Fan 

And what about the USB/SATA version?
I assume SATA is much faster?

Yes, (e)SATA is faster than any other consumer-grade option.

[cgc]

I doubt you'll see any difference between eSATA and FW800. My external FW800 drive and my internal SATA drives are the same speed in my MacPro.

[ghporter]

Do any of them really have a "triple interface"? It looks like you can get USB, USB with eSATA, or USB with Firewire (either 400 or 800). Or am I just looking in the wrong place?

The biggest issue you'd have between eSATA and FW800 would be when you were moving many small files rather than fewer (very) large files. FW's strength is in streaming, and moving many small files could really bog you down compared to eSATA, whereas fewer very large files would behave much like a stream and you'd get the best performance out of the FW connection that way. eSATA is just about exactly like the drive's native interface and will work at just about exactly the same speed as if the drive were installed internally.

[Mac Hammer Fan]

The drive with triple interface has USB2.0, FW400 and FW800