FW800 vs eSata external drive

How about a drive which does it both? So you can test and you are more flexible. Something like this (just an exampe):

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=621

you can always buy just an enclosure and then put a good, solid and fast drive in it. The WD black edition seems to be recommended drive in these forums.

Some ideas:
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/hard-drives/External-Enclosures/

RE: FW800 vs eSata external drive

RE:
"I'm getting a refurbished MBP with express card slot, and I was wondering whether I should use an esata drive for my external hard drive or a fw800? "

If you think you might want to be able to BOOT UP from the external, you MUST use Firewire.

E-SATA isn't bootable, at least not on the Mac. Not yet, anyway.

It's _always_ advisable to have at least one additional bootable drive other than your primary internal drive.

- John

RE: FW800 vs eSata external drive

RE:
"I'm not too concerned about having another bootable drive at this point, but may try it in the future.
After doing some more research, I've been leaning towards an enclosure with eSata. I'll probably go with the Seagate momentus 7200 drive though."

Important question:
Do you currently have _another_ external volume from which you can boot?

If not, you OUGHT TO be "concerned" about having one. It will become an ESSENTIAL tool when diagnosing problems you might encounter with your primary drive.

Another reason to choose firewire is COMPATIBILITY with other systems.

My suggestion is to buy a drive that has BOTH firewire 800 and E-sata. That way, you're covered.

If I were currently looking for such a drive, I'd probably look very carefully at the drives Other World Computing sells. The "ministack" drives are especially nice because of their many additional ports.

If you buy one with enough capacity, partition it several ways. Use one partition to "dupe" the contents of your primary drive (I recommend "SuperDuper!"), and set up the other partitions for work, storage, etc.

- John

If you want a serious recording drive, I'd suggest a Glyph. Their GT050Q (available in different sizes) has FW400/800 and eSata on it. It's a hefty enclosure and uses the Oxford 924 bridging chipset which is one of the few qualified by Digidesign to work with Pro Tools.

Also of interest to you will be their track count testing showing what's achievable in the real world through different connections (FW400/800/eSata all accounted for): http://www.glyphtech.com/support/trackcount.php

It's also nice that if you call them, you don't get a switch board...you get a person who picks up the phone and directs you to a product specialist at the company in the US (at least, that's what happened when I called them...very impressed.)

http://www.glyphtech.com/products/gt050q/

Empr said:

Those look pretty cool, but they're more than twice the price of a more conventional external hard drive. Do you use one? Are they really that much better?

Click to expand...

I have a 500GB model on order, should come in early this week, hopefully tomorrow. I ended up buying one because I didn't want to have to bother with finding a seperate enclosure with an Oxford 911/912/924 bridging chipset in it and putting a drive in it. I've gone that route with a bunch of 1TB USB enclosures/drives that I use for backup and it is a lot cheaper, but I figured that for my main audio drive I'd do it right. It comes with a padded carrying case, it's rackable and it's got a fan for cooling, and their warranty seems to be pretty damn good (3 Year Full Warranty, 2 Years of Free Level I Data Recovery, and 1 Year of Free Overnight Advance Replacement.)

If you decide to go with another option, at least that track count page on their site should give you a general idea of what to expect in terms of FW800 vs eSata.

Avoid the Newer Tech Ministack V3, it's the worst computer accessory I have never bought. The auto on/off never worked, the drive unmounted suddenly due the bad quality of the internal connectors. I solved this myself with a contact cleaner product and patiente, but then the power supply died at the age of four months. Macsales offered a RMA but I live in the EU and send it to the US is too expensive. Moreover, I don’t want to get a replacement of that extreme bad quality… thing.