3TB Portable external drive/FW800 - any suggestions?

"or will my best bet to buy the drive and an enclosure?
if so, any enclosure suggestions?"

I have always preferred buying the enclosure and drive _separately_, and then assembling them myself.

This way, you get to see how they go together, so if you ever encounter a problem, it's just as easy to take them _apart_ and troubleshoot.

If portability isn't a requirement, you might consider one of these:
http://www.amazon.com/Plugable-Dock...=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=B003UI62AG

You want to look for an enclosure (or dock) that has either an
ASMedia 1051e controller chip
or an
ASMedia 1053 controller chip.

Either of these support UASP (USB Attached SCSI Protocol) for faster performance on UASP capable systems.

dapitts08 said:

looking for a new drive...

i am a graphic designer and am running out of space on my 1TB Lacie rugged...and would like to move onto a 3TB portable external....

any suggestions for a replacement?

or will my best bet to buy the drive and an enclosure?

if so, any enclosure suggestions?

Click to expand...

If by portable, you mean bus powered, then you are out of luck as there are no 3TB drives that can be bus-powered.

I have seen a few >1TB bus-powered USB 3.0 drives - Seagate with 1.5TB and Western Digital with 2.0TB.

For larger than 2TB, you are limited to AC-powered drives - there are many, of varying sizes, shapes, capacities, and weight.

If you have a Costco nearby, I've seen 3TB and 4TB Seagate Backup Plus USB 3.0 drives for $129 and $149 respectively. These are nice becuase you can change to FireWire 800 or Thunderbolt easily by changing an interface adapter ($29 and $149 respectively).

You will need two large drives. One for the libraries. The second one is for Time machine to backup the entire file system.

dapitts08 said:

great info thanks.

that would explain why i can't find what i am looking for....lol

i was trying to get down to one drive but i think i'm going to go with two of these i guess....http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/on-the-go

Click to expand...

Case is kind of cool looking, but note well, when used with USB, there are other reports of sleep issues with some of the OWC drives.

I have an older USB 2.0/FireWire variation of this drive, and I have to admit it looks pretty cool. Installed my own drive, and use occasionally.

My goto drives for everyday USB 3.0 use are the LaCie, Seagate, and WD portable drives. The ones offered in the Apple online and retail stores support UASP, which gives the best performance on USB 3.0 Macs, and still work fine on the older USB 2.0 equipped Macs.

If you can find the same models on sale elsewhere, you may be able to save a few dollars. I've seen these drives everywhere, and the models marked as for Windows actually work fine on the Mac, too; just need to be reformatted using Apple Disk Utility.

dapitts08 said:

great info thanks.

that would explain why i can't find what i am looking for....lol

i was trying to get down to one drive but i think i'm going to go with two of these i guess....http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/on-the-go

Click to expand...

I'd recommend the 2tb passport studio if you must have fw800, OTOH if you have a mac with usb 3.0, the 2tb regular passport with usb 3.0 is quite a bit cheaper and can be found just about everywhere.

$150 vs 190 @ newegg.com just for example