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School me on External HDDs

Uncle LongUncle Long Registered User regular
edited January 2008 in Help / Advice Forum
Alright, I'm looking for something with over 500GB storage, something really reliable and something relatively inexpensive. I'd like to go for firewire if I could. This would be external storage for a mac. What's the good and what's the bad in the current Ex HDD market? I've been looking at the MyBook and the Seagate Free Agent. Are these worth the money or should I go for something else?

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  • EggyToastEggyToast Jersey CityRegistered User regular
    edited January 2008
    the Seagate thing is pretty cool, and seagate drives are generally solid. You're kind of stuck in the FireWire dept; I prefer it, but most options are USB 2.0 so you're limited in some ways. Now, the limit's not *that* bad since FW is a better protocol for data throughput anyway, but mostly you don't need to worry about the product but rather about the manufacturer.

    I use 2 pairs of 250GB seagates on my Powermac, and none of them have given me problems. One should probably be replaced because it's given me an occasional issue with messing up its TOC file, but it seems to have 'fixed' itself when I formatted it. So I can suggest the Seagates as worth the slight premium.

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  • Uncle LongUncle Long Registered User regular
    edited January 2008
    I've installed a 160 GB seagate in my iBook, and it's been running much better and faster than the original 40 GB. I guess I'll just have to look for the IEEE and hope I find something that meets my criteria.

    Aside from being more available than the firewire, is there any advantage to USB 2.0 that I should know about?

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  • EggyToastEggyToast Jersey CityRegistered User regular
    edited January 2008
    There are more computers that have USB, so you have better compatibility. And USB 2.0 can burst up to 480mbps, so if you're sending short batches of small files, you'll actually have better throughput.

    Most people don't send short bursts of small files to external drives, though -- they're for backups of big files, or files that are big that you don't want on your main harddrive, eating up space.

    FireWire is a better protocol for HDDs, especially due to the fact that it's serial and you can daisy chain it. I recommend it for hard drives and audio interfaces. But you do end up with some people who don't have FW and you then can't plug your shit into their computers. If it's not an issue, go FW -- I usually spend a premium to get them simply because it's a better protocol for HDD use in general.

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  • MichaelLCMichaelLC In what furnace was thy brain? ChicagoRegistered User regular
    edited January 2008
    The "FreeAgent Pro" has both FW and USB.

    Keep in mind if you format for Mac, Windows can't read it. Guess you wouldn't want to format 500+Gb in FAT32, though. If you think you'll need/want Windows access, maybe separate partitions?

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