Best/Reliable External Firewire Hard Drive?!

[abhishek]

Hey All,

What do you think is a good and reliable external firewire hard drive i can get for my new MacBook Laptop ?! Im looking to go in for a 200-300 GB (maybe 500 :D ) one for a max of 300$. I have previously been let down by Seagate products. But let me know anyways what you guys think.

Thanks in advance!

..abhi

[OptimismPrime]

i currently have 4 Maxtor OneTouch Firewire HDDs in use, all of them 300 GB Drives.

Works well on my Desktop Setup....i seriously don't recommend those heavy things as "portable" HD Space Expansion tho.

I can't say anything for the OneTouch II or OneTouch III ones, but the original ones have massive weight as downside for their aluminum casing.
Don't get me wrong, the enclosures are great, big contact surface between drive and enclsure does for realy good heat dicipation and therefore cooler drive and loger unit life....even realy cool stackable, but that makes these things heeeeavy! :D

[abhishek]

Yea..well I was looking into the Maxtor OneTouch II 300GB...probably will go in for that..ANyways as for you, these things have been reliable right?! *so im gonna be going the Optimism Prime way too* :D anyways thanks a ton for ur input...

[OptimismPrime]

no problem, here to help ;)

as for reliability, i use most of them for video work, one for backup, but they essentialy are running 24/7 alongside a G4....SO FAR *fingers crossed* none of them experianced any problems

[here2learn]

What allows for a faster transfer of data? Firewire or USB 2.0 and why? Thanks.

[OptimismPrime]

IN THEORY:
USB 2.0 offers 480 Mbit/s (60 MByte/s) of total Bandwidth
Firewire offers 400 Mbit/s (50 Mbyte/s) of total Bandwidth

this would make USB 2.0 apear to be superior, however...

IN REALITY:
USB protocol needs the host CPU perform a lot of commands, while FireWire is managed pretty much just by the FireWire Controller, in most cases ACTUALY ACHEAVED performance of FireWire (400) over USB ranges from 5-10 MBytes/s faster transfer rates when using external HDDs.

In Addition to that, there is FireWire 800 wich doubles the theoretical performance of Firewire to 100 MB/s.

In addition to the better Realworld performance of even the slower Firewire standard it makes for the easiest "external disk boot" on Macs.

So you should always go for an external Firewire, or Firewire/USB 2.0 Drive/Drive Enclosure

[here2learn]

Wow, thanks. Here's another couple of questions: would you pay the money up front to get a larger hard drive installed by the factory to make a larger internal hard drive (500GB), or would you save money by going with the smaller hard drive (250GB) and getting an additional external HD (250GB)? And if you did this, is it more convenient for accessing photos/videos stored on the external when going between Windows XP and the Mac OS in Boot Camp? Is there a risk of getting viruses or problems on the external because of the introduction of Windows XP on a Mac computer? Sorry for all the questions, but I'm learning! Thanks!

[OptimismPrime]

From the Sizes you use in your post i asume you are planing on getting a 20" iMac.

I personaly would under no circumstances get the 500 upgrade from Apple.

If you think of yourself as at least in some respect tech savy, upgrading the internal Harddrive yourself is cheaper, unscrew 3 screws, detach the back of the iMac, loosen 4 screws and 2 cables, replace the internal HDD.

If not, get an external HDD,
Maxtor OneTouch III Firewire+USB 2.0 Drives with 500 GB Capacity cost THE SAME amount of money JUST the upgrade costs from 250 to 500 in the Apple Store, wich would leave you with 250 GB more then getting the upgrade from Apple up front, for the same ammount of money.

Falling in route with the "external is easier for the not so tech savy" is also, that having 3 Partitions (1 OSX, 1 XP NTFS, 1 FAT32 for file exchange) has to be achived by extra steps not covered in the BootCamp process.
Having the BootCamp Assistent giving you your desired size OSX and XP partition, and having your exchange Partition on your external Drive is far easier on you here. Plus, if you want to "trade files", legal ones OF COURSE :rolleyes: with friends or co-workers, it is way easier this way.

Just format the drive as Fat32 (only downside here no single file larger then 4 GBs, so no DVD Images unless you pack them in a split archive) and you can easily share anything between OSX and XP, AND just about ANY other computer if you chose to take the external drive "on the road" with you

Every Windows Version since 98 SE, about any newer kernel Linux, and of course OSX Computer you take your Drive to will be able to get Stuff off and on there.

As for viruses, any drive you share between OSes can contract viruses as easily as the OSes you let access them.
Have in mind however, that practialy no Windows virus is able to infect your OSX (maybe some Office Macro Viruses).
But whenever you have your windows running, a virus active there can do whatever it does with the internal HDD, with your attached external one.

SECURITY:
Just take the same precautions you should if it was a "just-windows-PC"
Have your regular work account be "user" not "administrator" and use "run as" or re-login as administrator if some program needs that to work, use an Antivirus and Firewall software (firewall for incomming threads from the net is almost neglectable if you have a hardware router, but won't do anything for outgoing traffic). Free Antivirus Software can be aquired from http://www.free-av.com/, it is free for non-comercial use. there are free firewalls too that do a better job then Windows internal one.

[here2learn]

If I were to buy an internal 500GB hard drive to upgrade from the 250 GB hard drive that comes with the iMac 20 inch intel duo core, can I get a regular internal hard drive for a desktop? Like the "Seagate BARRACUDA ULTRA ATA 500 GB 7200RPM 16MB Internal Hard Drive"? And is it really as easy as taking off the back, unscrewing 4 screws, and unplugging two cables (and then reversing the process)? What about software loading and getting it all to work properly with the software Apple provides loaded when they send you the computer read to go? Thanks for your help!