Rockin' External Hard Drive

First off it is my understanding that the new Airport Extreme will only feature USB printer and disk sharing. No 800 400, no firewire period. Nor can a drive be connected directly to an ethernet port.

As far as a drive solution. I would go for a Seagate Barracuda. I prefer the 7200.10 to the 7200.9 series as they offer perpendicular drive recording, though in a wireless usb setting that may not really matter. You can get a newertech v2 miniStack from OWC, has the same footprint as the Mac Mini and new Airport Extreme. It comes as a case for $75 or $85 with disk utilities, or with a 500GB Seagate drive (7200.9) for $259. Or you can get the 7200.10 drive from newegg for $200 and the case for $75. Remember to get the IDE Ultra ATA drive and not the SATA drive since that is what the case takes. Also make sure it has a 16MB not 8MB cache.

You can also save a little money, while the 500s have come down a little since the 750s came out, (I got mine for $150 on Thanksgiving from newegg, was $225 at the time), the 320s and 400s tend to be the best price per gig.

All prices at newegg.com

7200.10 250GB $80 $.32/GB
7200.10 320GB $95 $.30/GB
7200.10 400GB $140 $.35/GB
7200.10 500GB $200 $.40/GB
7200.10 750GB $350 $.47/GB

You will be able to connect your PC to the Extreme. Apple's site is chock full of compatibility info on right hand side of the AE 'store page and the AE spec's page. If the AE is what you want, it will work.

BTW, the Ethernet ports can be used for an NAS device, but the USB interface will be faster in this case, since Apple has neglected to include Gigabit Ethernet ports in their new device. So your USB choice sounds like a good one.

PS: I'm no expert, I just Google a lot.
PSS: I dunno about the 802.11n compatibility risk with the PC.

Scottfire said:

What do the experts think of this combo........

LaCie d2 Hard Drive Extreme with Triple Interface 320GB, connected to USB hub then Canon printer also connected to the hub, then the hub connected to Airport Extreme (New) via USB.
Will I be able to hit this system with my PC and MBP????
Thanks again,
Scott

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LaCie d2 triple = unreliable. Plenty of posts/threads here about how bad they are. YMMV, but I would never buy one again. If you intend to leave an external hard drive on continuously rather than as an occasional back up device, make sure it has internal cooling.

I would go with the Seagate over the LaCie solution. You may also want to consider a Western Digital MyBook. They come in USB only which is cheaper than the FW/USB combo. Also as far as the newertech miniStack, it does come as a pre-packaged deal, 500GB for $259 in the stack, all ready to go, no assembly required. Now I would call OWC to see their thoughts on it (their sales people really know a lot), but since the miniStack is a FW and USB hub, while I am not sure that you could sync an iPod through it or use the FW ports when connected to the Airport via USB, you should be able to use the USB ports for printers. I think there are 4 USB ports. So in theory you could have that sitting under your Airport connected, have a printer plugged into it and then still have 3 USB ports on that HUB ready for additional printers and most likely additional drives. I would recommend looking into this solution. Price point is pretty good, a little cheaper if you go down in size, not to mention it is the same footprint at the Airport. Of course you probably want to put the Airport on top because of the antenna factor and since it is the shorter of the two.

p.s. I'll be in either Keystone or Vail on Sat, but thanks.

Firewire 800 drive?

Anyone have a rec. for a Firewire 800 hard drive?

MyBook by Western Digital

I love the My Book series external hDD from Western Digital. The Pro version comes with triple interface which is great for video editing and it is in this metallic colour that matches the Mac Pro. Bought the 500GB version from Amazon recently and this is my second one already.

chelseasian said:

I love the My Book series external hDD from Western Digital. The Pro version comes with triple interface which is great for video editing and it is in this metallic colour that matches the Mac Pro. Bought the 500GB version from Amazon recently and this is my second one already.

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hey Chelseasian-- does the My Book series automatically power down, or can you set a spin/power down profile?

one of the things i want most for a media/mp3 drive is that it spins down when it's not called into use.

Get one from OWC. The Mercury Elite Pro Aluminum USB 2.0 + FW 400, 500GB, costs $249.99 and the 320GB, $169.99.
The unit is covered by a 2 year warranty + 3 year warranty for the HD (total of 5 years for the HD). They use Samsung HDs, check it out:

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firew...teAL/400+USB2/

I was thinking of getting the Lacie 320GB unit for a while and planning on grabbing it from Newegg because it's going for $139 there, and there's a promotion with paypal to get free shipping.

But after seeing the crappy amazon reviews (http://www.amazon.com/320GB-Lacie-E...?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1174737103&sr=8-15) and reading what was said in this thread, I'm going to pass on it now.

So I'm looking for something else, and I really would like to utilize the FW 800 part of my soon to be arriving 15" 2.16ghz macbook pro.

Locatel said:

Get one from OWC. The Mercury Elite Pro Aluminum USB 2.0 + FW 400, 500GB, costs $249.99 and the 320GB, $169.99.
The unit is covered by a 2 year warranty + 3 year warranty for the HD (total of 5 years for the HD). They use Samsung HDs, check it out:

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firew...teAL/400+USB2/

Click to expand...

Locatel's got my attention with OWC's offerings. The unit I got my eye on is the 320GB w/ USB2 $197 unit on this page:
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/1394/USB/EliteAL/800+USB2/

I had my wallet set on paying $140 flat though. This is significantly more.

Even more is if I wanted to add a portability factor and get the OWC Mercury™ Elite Pro Classic
Portable Solutions:
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/usb/eliteclassic

It's $20 bucks more, but I guess it can come in handy since I am buying this external drive to be used with the macbook pro mainly so maybe there might be instances where I want to take it with me somewhere.

Any advice?

Rizvi1 said:

I was thinking of getting the Lacie 320GB unit for a while and planning on grabbing it from Newegg because it's going for $139 there, and there's a promotion with paypal to get free shipping.

But after seeing the crappy amazon reviews (http://www.amazon.com/320GB-Lacie-E...?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1174737103&sr=8-15) and reading what was said in this thread, I'm going to pass on it now.

So I'm looking for something else, and I really would like to utilize the FW 800 part of my soon to be arriving 15" 2.16ghz macbook pro.



Locatel's got my attention with OWC's offerings. The unit I got my eye on is the 320GB w/ USB2 $197 unit on this page:
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/1394/USB/EliteAL/800+USB2/

I had my wallet set on paying $140 flat though. This is significantly more.

Even more is if I wanted to add a portability factor and get the OWC Mercury™ Elite Pro Classic
Portable Solutions:
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/usb/eliteclassic

It's $20 bucks more, but I guess it can come in handy since I am buying this external drive to be used with the macbook pro mainly so maybe there might be instances where I want to take it with me somewhere.

Any advice?

Click to expand...

My laptop arrived today! But now I desperately need to get this external HD.. any advice to my above queries?