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Joeytpg

macrumors 6502
Original poster
hi, as mention on the topic, i need an external HD, since my 60gb pbook drive is almost full, plus i'll be starting some classes in Audio Production and that takes a lot of space.....so after looking at some external drives like Lacie and other, i decided that it's cheaper for me to buy an internal drive and buy an external enclosure..........

...i looked at Amazon.com and found a 200GB 7,200rpm MAXTOR drive with 8mb buffer.......well here are the specs....

Features:

8 MB buffer size
Compatible with Windows operating systems
200 GB storage capacity
7,200 RPM
Ultra EIDE ATA/133 interface

and i've been thinking about getting NextStar ext. enclosure...

What advices can you guys give me?........i'll be paying 115 for the Drive plus 40 for the Ext. Enclosure, which is somewhat around 150......should i just put extra $50 and buy an external Drive, or will this work?...........

can you give me advice on another good internal drive and enclosure?...

last question..... the internal drive doesn't have to specify that's for Macs right? it'll work for both platforms?
 
Do you Americans have a version of ebuyer.co.uk? It's really cheap to get hard drives from there. £60 for 160GB I think, you can then get a case for £10ish from ebay. That's what I did for my old laptop.

I'm not sure if it'll work on Mac's though, I think it should, but not 100% sure.
 
Cheap 180GB Hard drive

Hi,

I found a typo at a website when I was looking for a hard drive at www.foxtec.com. Click products, external hardrives "firewire". the 180GB harddrive is for some reason marked much lower than all the others. I've been running mine and it's been great.
 
I strongly suggest getting a Vantec enclosure. I had the...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817145125

...working flawlessly with various hard drives until I decided to sell it. Now I want it back, I plan on picking up another one.

Vantec also makes a newer model with a little cooling fan, but I found that if you can stand the jewelry/watch sized screws and the screwdriver that comes with it, that grey one of the best out there.

And BTW - the Firewire/USB version sucks, just get the USB2.0-only model unless you are heavily attached to FW for some reason.
 
You should be attached to firewire, never leave home without it. For audio you need constant streaming, and USB 2.0 can pull it off, but firewire is much more consistant and proven.
 
make sure that the enclosure is not working with windoos protocol, it really makes your datatransfer very slow. Just read an article about it where they test it with multiple drives with different protocols. Take a drive with the AFP protocol, this has the fastest transferrate.
 
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