Best External Hard Drive?

[MacAztec]

My dad is looking for a good sized external hard drive to pair with his PowerBook. There are a few questions that have come up. Will Firewire-800 make a big difference in transfer speeds (if the drive is only 7200RPM w/8MB Cache)? Should we build our own drive?

I found an OWC drive that has a 2 year warranty, Firewire800 and Firewire400, 160GB 7200RMS w/8MB Cache for $199 shipped. Can anyone find something better?

 

[JzzTrump22]

LaCie is a popular favorite on these boards...

 

[Blue Velvet]

OK, on a FW800 LaCie Big Disk Extreme I was getting continuous write speeds of about 52-58 mb/sec when copying over a 40gb folder.

Otherwise, maybe best to follow this thread.
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/110230/

 

[blackpeter]

LaCie is nice, but I prefer to build my own. You get to pick your own drive and it less expensive to replace/upgrade as time goes on.

 

[timnosenzo]

LaCie always seems to avert chipset compatibility issues and that sort of thing. Plus the d2 line is pretty nice looking.