Powerbooks and Portable HD's: Does Firewire have more power than USB?

T

Turnip

Registered
Hey guys -

I'm the owner of a small company, and I'm going to start doing a little more traveling. Given that, I'd prefer to pick up a decent external "portable" hard drive (capacity < 50 GB), rather than play musical files when I'm arriving/leaving the office.

Originally, I'd purchased a LaCie portable 50GB drive (the one designed by F.A. Porsche, or whatever the hell). It was super pretty, and worked fine on the desktops, but required that I use two USB connectors - one for power, one for data - to function with my Powerbook. That solution is not acceptable for me.

The question is, I've been eyeballing other options now, and I've found one from IOGEAR that supports both Firewire and USB; will a Firewire device find enough bus-side power to work where the USB did not? Or, do you know of any USB HD's that you've seen work without an additional power source on a Powerbook?

Thanks, in advance...
 
I have the 100 GB version of Lacie's mobile FireWire/USB hard drive. It works amazingly well, and I use it to store files and a clone of my iBook's hard drive (I have the Lacie partitioned into two volumes). I've never plugged it into my USB port, because it uses FireWire and I wanted a faster connection. I think it will power itself on both USB and FireWire, but it powers itself on FireWire for sure, so I only have one cable coming out of it and into the FireWire port on my iBook. Being that it's so fast (5400 RPM - 200 RPM faster than the iBook's hard drive), I can run apps right off of it. I have an Appllications folder on one of the partitions and I drop certain apps that eat a lot of space into there and run them as if they are on my iBook's drive. Also, if you wanted to install another version of the Mac OS on a partition on this drive, and boot into it (because it uses FireWire, you can do this), it works great. I tested this out when I first got it, and then deleted the installation after the test. The speed was great, and I didn't really notice a difference.

If you are in the market for an external hard drive, I'd always go with something that supports FireWire. You can even ditch the USB, but I wanted both so that I can plug it into my PC as well, if needed (though I never have).

By the way, for this drive, you can purchase a power cable from Lacie if you don't want to run right it from your Mac, but I don't see a need. It drains battery power on the iBook like nothing else, but if I have a wall outlet to plug in the hard drive, why not just plug in the iBook?
 
The key here for me is that I want to be able to use the hard drive at times that I don't have access to a power outlet.

If the Firewire connection draws enough power from the laptop, that's the way to go.
 
Turnip said:
The key here for me is that I want to be able to use the hard drive at times that I don't have access to a power outlet.

If the Firewire connection draws enough power from the laptop, that's the way to go.
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It does, but you are not going to get the same battery life out of your portable that you do now. The external drive will eat it up quickly. Get a second battery if you are planning on being away from an outlet for very long. Other than that, this drive rocks.

Oh, get yourself one of those little mini camera bags to carry the drive around, if you are worried about scratching or scuffing it in a laptop bag. That's my only complaint - I thought that, for the price I paid, this drive should have come with a hard case of some kind for transporting it around. I use a small camera bag (<$10 at a camera store) with a pouch in the front to carry the FireWire cable, too.
 
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