External Hard Drive - Buffalo or WD?

[irbdavid]

Hi guys,

Can anyone tell me from experience whether or not the auto power off function on either of these two USB hard drives works when they're used with a mac that just sleeps rather than one that actually gets shut down. Also, would the auto power off work if they were connected to the mac via a powered USB hub?

Buffalo DriveStation (http://www.ebuyer.com/UK/product/90693)
Western Digital MyBook (http://www.ebuyer.com/UK/product/109356/rb/22728052791)

Cheers,

Dave

[techster85]

I have heard that the MyBook will autopower off when your mac sleeps. Now, I heard this about the MyBook Pro, so the regular USB drive might be a little different.

[CanadaRAM]

Why buy a finished-goods drive with a measly 1 year warranty and a 2 Mb drive cache, when you could build your own with a "internal" IDE drive and a good case (like a MacAlly, where you have the choice of USB, FW400 FW800 or any combination) and get an 8 or 16 Mb cache and a 3 to 5 year warranty on the drive mechanism, for about the same price?

[thenewguy]

I think you need to do some math.

The only MacAlly External Enclosure that has Firewire 800 is this: http://www.macally.com/spec/usb/storage_device/phr_100acb.html

Its $150. A 250gb HDD with 16mb cache and all that is going to be around $80. That's $230 for a 250gb ext. For That exact same price at Dell Home you can get the My Book Pro 500gb! That has a 3 year warranty, 16mb cache, FW 800, and the aesthetics are a no brainer.

The 250gb version is way cheaper, too.