recommendations for hard drive wanted

G

guapagirl

Registered
My G4 imac hard drive is down to the last 10Gb, so I think I ought to get an external HD. Can anyone recommend me a good one?

I'll probably store the iTunes and iPhoto music and photos from the three user accounts I have on it if that makes a difference. I've looked online and quite frankley the choice is so huge, that I think my head is going to explode Scanners stylee!

I'm thinking 250 Gb would be good and I can go to about £150. I have firewire 400 and usb2, I'm guessing firewire is faster than usb?

Help! :eek:
 
firewire is 400mbps, USB2 is 480mbps. they are generally indistinguishable in speed, but firewire for mac has added benefits, like being able to boot your computer from that drive if needs be, the usb2 won't. that and you will run out of usb slots much faster than firewire slots, so it's good to balace that out a bit.
 
Actually, I had a similar question with a twist. If I use one of these 2.5" laptop drive enclosures with firewire then is firewire powered through a single port ?

I am wondering if a 5v PSU is always needed for this kind of drive or if there is enough power going via firewire. The USB2.0 only ones without PSU sockets seem to dominate 2 USB ports due to power requirements.

guapagirl: what is your budget ? I use the Lacie disks at work and they are rock solid in my opinion. Buy direct and avoid ebuyer.co.uk!
 
I would highly recommend the IceCube II USB & Firewire enclosure see it here. They're very stylish, and work great.

As for the HD, go with a Western Digital.

I would recommend getting the HD and the enclosure seperately, it's usually much cheaper, and you know exactly what you are getting.
 
I can tell you this much. I purchased the Lacie Porsche drive over a year ago. Although it works well, it is noising when running. A friend of mine purchased a Western Digital drive, it clearly out performs mine, and is much quieter to operate.
 
Yea I would avoid LaCie Porsche drives. I was seduced by its beauty, but the darn thing died 6 months after purchase (the enclosure, not the HD itself). Had to buy a new case for it.
 
I own a SimpleTech I bought from Costco. I don't know how long I've had it, but it has already been very useful to me. I actually bought the 160GB version, but like the SimpleTech product I link to above, it features both firewire 400 and USB2. You can go to Costco.com and perform a search for SimpleTech... there are more options.

Costco has a superb refund policy, no? (Dunno if it's available in your country.)
 
Just returned from CompUSA. They have the ACOMDATA 250Gig for 90 bucks after rebate! The 160Gig version works great with my wife's iMac.
 
LaCie has great drives, get one that has both firewire and usb 2.0. Have double or triple the amount of gigs you wish to back up.
Portable drives go up to 150 GB and they are nice if you want to carry from one place to another. SmartDisk has somewhat expensive but good drives and easy setup and management.
 
Thank you all!

I was looking at the LaCie drives being a sucker for looks, but if they are noisy then I'll maybe skip them. The icecube looks good, but I am a complete techno dunce and would probably mess up fitting a drive into it. I'll look into the western digital drives and see if they are available in the UK.

imaccer, my budget is about £150 max.

Cheers all, Liz :)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top