External hard drive advice

We liked the Lacie Big Disk Extreme because it had both Firewire 400 (6 pin)and 800 (9 pin) ports complete with cables so we could use it with our older G4s as well as the new G5s.

Check out your new Imac specs at http://www.apple.com/imac, I think it's got FW400.

It's fast, too.

We've had a SCSI Lacie external 2gb drive run off a beige G3 for over 7 years... and it was still going strong when we ditched it.

I have always herd good things about products from http://www.macsales.com they have good external drives and offer lots of variety for reasonable prices!

Yes, OWC (http://www.macsales.com) rocks. I have 3 d2s from LaCie and I like them all very much. Personally, I don't like Maxtor or IBM or Western Digital drives. All crap. I like Seagate drives.

I have a LaCie D2 160 and am jonesing for that 1TB drive, baby...all the useless crap I could stuff in that thing!

I recently purchased a couple LaCie d2 160 drives and couldn't be more satisfied. The firewire800 connection is very fast, it has a firewire400 connector for my older computers, and they look cool.

buy a lacie 80gig and a 250gig internal drive
pull the lacie apart
pull out the 80gig drive from the lacie housing
put the 300gig drive in the lacie housing
put it back together
throw out the 80gig drive left over.

there you have a really CHEAP 250gig external lacie!!!

Lacie D2

I have a Lacie d2 160 gig drive ands great. Beautiful small design. Although your imac doesnt have firewire 800. It is firewire 800 compatiable and that what i use it with my powerbook and it speed. video rendering file transfer you name it. Also i need things that look great and the d2 has met my high expectation

good luck with your purchase.


Dick

A Vote for EZQ

Whelp, I'm going to put in a plug for EZQuest. I have 3 devices from them of various ages (CD-RW, DVD-RW, and External HD), and I love them all. They buy the actual drives from others (Pioneer, etc.), but the casing is beautiful and super rugged. They always provide any cables that are needed, as well as software. And, they cater to the Mac market as their first priority.

My one and only gripe - the power button is in the back, so you have to make sure to place it on your desktop in such a way that you can easily reach it (assuming you want to turn it off when it's not in use.)

I have a Lacie d2 250gig and it works a treat.

tateusmaximus said:

buy a lacie 80gig and a 250gig internal drive
pull the lacie apart
pull out the 80gig drive from the lacie housing
put the 300gig drive in the lacie housing
put it back together
throw out the 80gig drive left over.

there you have a really CHEAP 250gig external lacie!!!

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That would be kind of a waste since the iMac he's buying is coming with a 160GB Serial ATA drive. If you are going to do that, just buy an external Firewire box and put a Parallel ATA drive in it from someplace like Newegg (you can buy any size, it doesn't have to be 160GB). You can probably buy a cheap 200GB drive with a ton of rebates from someplace like CompUSA, Best Buy, Fry's, or Circuit City. They're always running specials for stuff like that. And an external Firewire enclosure can be about $40 for a cheap one, to about $80 for a good one. OWC has some good ones, and some that are prebuilt like the Lacies. It's more expensive to buy a prebuilt, but easier and better supported if you have a problem. Don't bother with a more expensive FW800 device, the iMac only has FW400. You could get a USB2 enclosure or a FW400/USB2 device, but USB2 is actually slower than Firewire despite having higher #'s. Just make sure you get a 7200 RPM drive with 8MB cache.

ScotRobson said:

Hi all

I am looking into getting an external hard drive - I'm not sure what size I will need. My computer hard drive will be 160GB so im guessing an external one would only need to be the same?

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I don't think anyone has specifically answered this, but you can go for any size external drive it does not have to be the same capacity. Like others have already said the Lacie D2 extreme drives are very good, I have the 250GB Version

Is now a good time to mention that I bought the triple interface Lacie D2 160GB a few weeks ago and have had to send it back due to repeated failure?

Lacie seem to be much more interesting in design than functionality these days...

What I really wanted was an old-style FW400/USB2 PocketDrive, but sadly they've disappeared

I would rather go for a lacie 250gb before a 160gb,
the reason? The lacie 160gb hds only has 2mb cache versus 8mb on the 250gb... Thats a huge difference..

yes it's 4x the amount... But does it really matter? I mean, explain why cache is so needed.

Godfather said:

yes it's 4x the amount... But does it really matter? I mean, explain why cache is so needed.

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With 8MB of onboard cache to use, more frequently accessed data would be held in the cache. When the system needs the data, it's pulled from the cache instead of having to be read from the hard disk.
Cache is basically RAM and since retrieving data from RAM is much faster than retrieving data from the hard disk, the larger amount of hard drive cache is a boost for system performance.

This doesn't mean that you would get 4x speedboost with 4x amout of cache, but you would probably get a +10% boost.
New SATA drives has 16mb cache, this will make the boost even larger.

ScotRobson said:

Hi all
My computer hard drive will be 160GB so im guessing an external one would only need to be the same?
Scot

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Does this mean that you want to use it as a back up for your internal hard drive. In that case, you should get the SAME size hard drive.

But if its just used as another hard drive, unless you really need one right now, don't buy one if your not sure. I mean, you have 160 GB. I would use that up before considering to buy another one.

If you were to buy one, get Lacie (except the Porche ones) or OWC. I have both and there are both brands and their excellent.

As far as compatibility goes: FW800 hd works with FW800 and 400. Firewire will not mix with USB in anyway.

Don't get MAXTOR. I have never heard a single positive comment about it.

ScotRobson said:

Thanks for your advice everyone, it will be for backing up my main hard drive and maybe extra things on there aswell. I have a lot of movies etc which take up a lot of room.

I went for the LeCie d2 250 in the end and should be being delivered today! A new toy to play with!!!!

Thanks again
Scot

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Sounds like a good choice to me. It'll net you an extra 90GB beyond what you need to back up your 160GB primary, and LaCie D2 drives are great.
New toys are always good fun.

ScotRobson said:

Thanks for your advice everyone, it will be for backing up my main hard drive and maybe extra things on there aswell. I have a lot of movies etc which take up a lot of room.

I went for the LeCie d2 250 in the end and should be being delivered today! A new toy to play with!!!!

Thanks again
Scot

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Congratulations Scot, Hope you enjoy your new drive, post back after you have played with it and tell us what you think.

Coolvirus007 said:

If you were to buy one, get Lacie (except the Porche ones) or OWC. I have both and there are both brands and their excellent.

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Why do you say except the Porche ones? I'm asking because I've been looking at getting the 200gig for a while now.

aswitcher said:

I have a Lacie d2 250gig and it works a treat.

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How much did you pay aswitcher?
I'm keen for an external hard drive - and was looking at LaCie.
Don't know if it is just me or Canberra...

but the prices seem to be almost double that of other brand names?
I expect more markup (and exchange conversion) so can't compare our prices with those of the threads that are USA based...

but seems over $2 per GB?
I thought other brands were generally $0.50 per GB or even
I can buy a normal drive alot cheaper and put it in my own box?

Would like to buy one that looks good (only moderately important though) but reliable - which is why I didn't necessarily want to build one myself.

DJY said:

How much did you pay aswitcher?

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~$500 AUD (macmal.com.au - slow service (a week or three for something promised in 24hrs) and shipping costs but generally prices can be competative) for 50 gig tripple port d2...fw800 is what I am using but USB 2 as another option.

I'm keen for an external hard drive - and was looking at LaCie.
Don't know if it is just me or Canberra...

but the prices seem to be almost double that of other brand names?
I expect more markup (and exchange conversion) so can't compare our prices with those of the threads that are USA based...

but seems over $2 per GB?

Click to expand...

Sounds about right.

I thought other brands were generally $0.50 per GB or even
I can buy a normal drive alot cheaper and put it in my own box?

Would like to buy one that looks good (only moderately important though) but reliable - which is why I didn't necessarily want to build one myself.

Click to expand...

I think Lacie are my benchmark. Sure some others can be a bit cheaper BUT I have also heard a few dodgy things about some of them, and I agree, build one yourself and risk relying on something that has a greater chance of crashing. Haven't seen 50c per GB....where did you see that?