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External Hard Drive Question for Imac (USB 2.0 vs FireWire 400)

M

Mac2004

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Mar 17, 2004
296
43
Which external hard drive should I get for my new 24 inch Imac?

Western Digital MyBook Home Edition 500GB with USB 2.0 and FireWire 400 for $119.

or....

Western Digital MyBook Essential Edition 1TB (terabyte) with only USB 2.0
connection for $129 (No FireWire 400).

All I back up are my important documents, IPhoto Library (12,000 photos - currently 5.4 GB in size), ITunes Library (which is less than 200 songs), and some clip art images.

Is the FireWire 400 connectivity more important than the extra 500GB in hard drive space and would I ever even use more than 500GB of space when on my computer I am only using 50GB of my hard drive right now.

Lastly, did Western Digital make a change to their external hard drives in the past 1-2 years. I have an old one where the blue circle moves around when backing up and it was noisy. I noticed that the newer ones are a lot quieter now and they don't make much noise??
 
Based on what you're working with, you probably don't need the extra speed of Firewire (although note that with a 24" iMac, you also have Firewire 800 in addition to 400). If you were working with a project in a high-end program that required constant reading or writing to the external, I'd say Firewire. If you're just backing up, get the extra 500B and use USB.
 
I would also go for the extra space, as I assume you are going to be using timemachine to do your backups, the back up will take longer with USB than firewire but if you dont need the higher speeds, then higher cappacity for the win!


Simon
 
I was going to suggest building your own external drive using parts like this or this and either this or this. But then I saw the prices and saw that getting a preconfigured external drive from WD is cheaper. So go for either. Then again, building your own 1TB drive will set you off anywhere between $164 or $183, which is only $35 to $54 more expensive than the 1TB USB-only WD drive. Plus, you get 3 years warranty on the Samsung drive and even 5 years on the Seagate drive when building your own. On the WD My Book Essential drive, you only get 1 year. On the Home Edition, you get 3 years. I went for building my own using Seagate drives, just for their excellent warranty. And, with the OWC drive enclosure, you get the excellent Oxford 934 chipset. Extremely reliable and really fast.

So, wrapping my story up, you pay a maximum of $54 extra, which will get you both a 1TB drive and FW400. You even get the Oxford 934 chipset. And on top of that, you get 5 years of warranty, whereas you get only 1 year with the WD My Book Essential drive.

See for yourself what that's all worth to you.
 
What drive did you get? Did you get one of the two WDs? Did you get a DIY kit? Let us know; always nice to hear what people eventually got.
 
based on your needs, it doesn't sound like you need either 1 TB or FW 400. Either drive should be more than sufficient if you're just backing up that relatively small amount of data.
 
Bengt77 said:
Then again, building your own 1TB drive will set you off anywhere between $164 or $183, which is only $35 to $54 more expensive than the 1TB USB-only WD drive. Plus, you get 3 years warranty on the Samsung drive and even 5 years on the Seagate drive when building your own. On the WD My Book Essential drive, you only get 1 year. On the Home Edition, you get 3 years. I went for building my own using Seagate drives, just for their excellent warranty. And, with the OWC drive enclosure, you get the excellent Oxford 934 chipset. Extremely reliable and really fast.
Click to expand...

Not sure where you got those numbers.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822152102
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817145038

$100 + $20 = $120. For a 1 TB Seagate drive you pay about $10 extra.
 
Hard drives have become quite silent these days.

Apparently, you don't need the speed of firewire. I'd get the USB, unless you think you'll need all of your USB ports for other things. That might be another reason to go with firewire.

If you only fill up 50 Gb right now, you probably won't fill up those disks in the near future, but I still remember people saying that my father would never ever fill his 20 Mb (yes...Megabytes) hard drive back in the 80's. However, if you use it with time-machine, it will fill the drive completely over (not a very long) time.

And yes, let us know.
 
croy said:
No his numbers were right, yours are wrong. His was giving the OP USB, Firewire & the 1TB drive. Your solution only has the USB, which puts him back in the place of just buying what the OP posted to begin with.
Click to expand...

Ah ok. I remember that I had a few enclosures with USB/1394 ports on them, but they're all IDE drives. I guess IDE drives are only going up to 500 GB these days.

Well anyways, my not being able to read aside;

I would consider making your own drive with a capacity ~500 GB instead of going for a 1 TB now. You'll get a good warranty with a Seagate or whatever and having a 1 TB drive fail on you really sucks. Better yet buy two and have a backup of the backup.
 
If I were you, I would get a My Book Studio edition which is slightly more expensive (in the UK) but enables you to use both.

Also, I would use firewire as I have better places that USB ports can be used at.
 
miles01110 said:
Ah ok. I remember that I had a few enclosures with USB/1394 ports on them, but they're all IDE drives. I guess IDE drives are only going up to 500 GB these days.

Well anyways, my not being able to read aside;

I would consider making your own drive with a capacity ~500 GB instead of going for a 1 TB now. You'll get a good warranty with a Seagate or whatever and having a 1 TB drive fail on you really sucks. Better yet buy two and have a backup of the backup.
Click to expand...

Just to clarify for folks, Seagate still manufactures a 750Gb IDE drive. That is the top size that was ever made with an IDE/PATA interface.
 
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