Advice for Firewire 800 External HD

[wnlawther]

New registered user on the forum, and I have a question about purchasing an external hd and thought this would be the place to post. I am in the need of a drive to use for time machine among other things, as I have a 500GB MacBook Pro, and was wondering if anyone had any suggestions. It needs to be Firewire 800, USB, 500 GB or more, and portable.

So far I have come up with two posible ideas, and any opinions on the drives I have found would be much appreciated. Links below...
G-Drive Mobile
WD Passport Studio

Thank you.

 

[costabunny]

My vote on portables is always for WD (Mine is about 3yrs old now and has been all over the world with me and dismantled so many times to use as a quick adaptor to fix clients laptops) - it hasnt been treated with as much respect as it should have been yet is still tippety-top (older 40GB IDE Passport).

OWC has some nice ones tho (pocket sized with USB/FW400 & FW800 in them)

 

[thegoldenmackid]

http://guides.macrumors.com/External_Hard_Drives

 

[Rizvi1]

I've had good experience with my Western Digital My Passport Studio. It's 500GB and I purchased back in April 2009 from Newegg for $140. Using it with my 15" 2.2ghz Macbook Pro. I'm looking to replace with a bigger one that's like 1TB or so and I wanted to still have Firewire 800/FW 800

 

[Snowbound]

I've had good luck with the WD MyBook studio. You never said that you needed portability, so if you don't mind plugging it into the wall, the MyBook Studio is a nice drive.

 

[GGJstudios]

OWC Mercury On-The-Go Pro

 

[Rizvi1]

wow, one terabyte for $260.. pretty steep. I was hoping for something under $200.

 

[johnnyham]

I picked up a 1 TB Western Digital MyBook on sale at Best Buy in August '09 for $140. Definitely one of my better computer investments. The USB-only drive was only $130, but I definitely prefer Firewire when it comes to data transfer, so I was willing to shell out a few extra bucks for it. The FW model came with USB and eSATA too.

I don't really see why you'd need a portable drive (I'm assuming USB powered?) when you have a 500 GB HDD in your Pro already. My drive is portable in that I can easily slide it into its box and carry it over to wherever I'm going. Doesn't weigh much either.

 

[Rizvi1]

^ I want to keep large files on it and also share between computers like my home Mac Mini and my MacBook Pro on the go. And where I am I may not have power so that's why I want to keep it portable. But working w/ HD and all, the files get big. I do have a large Fantom Drive I have for backups