External Hard drive question

[530farm]

So i have a new i5 mbp w/ 320gb harddrive. I imagine that should be sufficient for most of my programs and music, but want something bigger for storing movies mostly. With the main purpose of movies and backup, do you think its worth the extra money to buy one with firewire 800 or do you think usb 2.0 is sufficient. Also any recommendations on a good HD would be nice also.

Thanks.

 

[miles01110]

USB will be fine. There's a lengthy Guide on External Hard Drives.

 

[diablo2112]

If you're doing things like a time machine backup with this drive, then yes, it most definitely is worth the faster speeds of the FW800 interface. And as I just found (in this thread https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/906616/), a 7200 rpm drive in a FW800 interface is well worth it.

 

[miles01110]

Problems I have with Firewire vs. USB debate:

-- FW is not as ubiquitous as USB.
-- You'll save time with the initial large backup, but subsequent backups are smaller and take less time no matter what you're using to transfer files, mostly negating the FW speed advantage.
-- Who knows if the next round of computers will have Firewire

If you feel like footing the initial cost of the FW enclosure then there's no problem. I just don't think it's worth it for your case.

 

[diablo2112]

Every Firewire enclosure I've seen also includes USB 2.0 as an interface as well. Thus, the only issue is cost. In my case, I paid about a $20 premium for a FW800 drive compared to a USB-only. And, the FW drive came with 3 nice cables, including FW800 to FW800, USB, and FW800 to FW400.

YMMV.

 

[Vantage Point]

I can highly recommend the Mercury Elite Pro series. It comes in both flavors, USB only and USB + Firewire with all cables and backup software

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/1394/USB/EliteAL/eSATA_FW800_FW400_USB

FW800 is about 2x faster and worth the little extra expense IMO. I have the 1.5TB version which has 3 partitions to 1) Clone my iMac 2) store some extra photo files and 3) Time Machine. I also have that backed up on another disk using the Voyager which is extremely versatile and works with all size Hard drives and connections
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/NewerTech/Voyager/Hard_Drive_Dock