That's a great looking external HD box. Lot's of vents, although modern drives seem to run much cooler and have better heat resistance. I bought a OWC HD with the multi connection fw 400/800 and USB is very handy. The steel box covered in a plastic case that has very tiny slits gets little ventalation. OWC said those drive external cases with the Seagates don't suffer from overheating...but the cooler the drive the better and longer lasting especially for the associated electronics. Also getting a good Oxfordshipsaet may be an overlooked detail. After buying an external seagate 400 HD I found out that they use an Inition Firwire chipset, and in the past Macs appear to have had trouble with chipsets other than Oxford. The Initio chipset appears to work fine.
About a large drive and itunes. I first bought a 200GB HD, then as my itunes collection grew a 400, then a pair of 500 SATA HD's one Maxtor and one Seagate used in a Mirror configuration. I don't recommedn Maxtor drives, although they are owned by Seagate and cost less. My Mirrored setting "degraded", so only the one Seagate was working. Upon research the Maxtor apparently is known for this behavoir.
With 350+ GB of itunes music, representing thousands of dollars of CD's and hundreds of hours of time, backing up becomes crucial.
Mirrored drives running continuously help if one drive fails. Problem is two mirrored drives can become corrupted at the same time or get fried in a lightening storm. I've learned here that a true back up should at least be a seperate drive or beter yet on DVD hard copies (or both) and kept in another location or at least not always hooked up to the same computer.
About size, especially for itunes, you want all your music on one drive. I don't know if there is an easy way to split an itunes library across multiple HD's, or if it's possible?
Hard drives that say 300GB may only be 260GB or less, so you need a larger one than is indicated by the label. Also to keep from having to buy new HD or a new set as the itunes/media collection grows, I recommend jumping ahead and getting a much larger drive, to minimize the number of times you will need to transfer info to a new storage device.
I really like that OWC HD case and definitely recommend getting the SATA option, since someone posted that it's only $10 more. I'm expecting to simply transfer my sata drives over a to a new Mac Pro case when I upgrade Macs, instead of having outdated/slower HD technology to mess with.
The 5 year warranty on some Seagate int/external HD's is an important consideration but only after making sure you have a backup solution set up.
As a price example I just bought a USB/SATA Seagate 750GB, 16mb cache (699 real GB) HD for $199(before tax) at Freys Electronics. They matched the price offered at Best Buy. So $200 750 HD are availabe along with the fast SATA connection. There is a 5 year warranty.
I would have like a firewire 400 and 800 connection but on the NEW Seagate Free Agent Pro's the only way to connect the dual Fire Wire in/outputs is to remove the USB or USB/SATA modual and screw in the FW modual.
I just transferred my complete iTunes library, (340 GB) from an internal SATA HD to the external 750GB Seagate. A simple drap the folder to the new drive process. It took about 9 hours to complete over USB. Not too bad. If my math is correct that's 327 mb/sec? But I might have be one decimal place off. 358000mb in 9hours 9 x 360 x
I'm thinking a FW modual might be availabe from Seagate, but who knows how much Segate will charge?
It may also be better to get a 16mb cache. Some of the cheaper Seagate prices are for HDs with only a USB connection, so read the descriptions. I really like FW devices and all my other HDs are FW, except the internal 500GB SATA's. Although I can't boot from the new Seagate 750, I still more drives that are backed up with OS X, so I can boot from them if needed.
SATA/eSATA cards are coming down in price. A dual Macsense SATA card that also allows connection of a standard ATA IDE HD was $80. There are probably better.
I bought another dual SATA card but a I'm not sure it's going to work in a Mac, but it was only $29.
I'd look for a SATA card sold by a Mac specialist to avoid incompatible equipment or bugs.
Greenjeens
