External hard drive

[shakespeare]

Okay, ten gigabytes just weren't enough: I can admit that now. So it's time to buy an external hard drive for my original PowerBook G4.

What do you guys recommend? I don't want to spend unnecessary amounts of money, but I'd like it to look good, work fast (I want to use it just like my internal hard drives), and carry at least 20 GB.

The LaCie ones on the Apple Store website (specifically http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APP.../wo/ykoQy03AeT16f8YOM71/1.3.0.3.27.8.3.8.13.0) look perfect but they're so cheap I wonder if they're any good.

Thoughts?

 

[King Cobra]

I used to think that the 4GB on my iMac 233 would last me more than 2 years.

I'm not big on Hard Drives, but a quick search on Cnet lists some of their highest rated hardware.

http://computers.cnet.com/hardware/0,10121,0-1092-402-0,00.html?tag=st.re.9870989.dir.1092-402-0

The Ext. at the bottom of the page may be the one that works best, but it is internal.

I'm searching through the external list on page 2, and the Lacie drive continues to stick out in my mind. This one is external [post edit from internal ].

The Lacie website has a variety of Hard Drives.
www.lacie.com

Some people have had problems with LAcie, though, for whatever reason. Check the Cnet review to see if it's something you'll like or find annoying, not just for LAcie, but for each model you find interesting (weight, noise, power consumption, etc.)

 

[medea]

Personally I'm looking into getting (well actually I'm done looking, just waiting for the money) one of the new Lacie D2 drives http://www.lacie.com/
and so far all the people I've talked to that have Lacie drives highly recommend them.

 

[Hemingray]

Just out of curiosity, why are you intent on getting an external drive? Why not just upgrade the internal drive with a 40GB or something? Keep it a "portable" outfit. Just my opinion.

 

[cb911]

i want to get an external drive as well. i've got a rev. C TiBook, but it's only got a 30GB HD. i would get a 40GB internal, but an extra 10GB is not enough to justify the price. i would rather get a 20 or 30GB external and then be able to easily use it with my desktop at home or my TiBook.

 

[Lz0]

Why not get an iPod. It's all you need and more.

 

[shakespeare]

Actually I have an iPod, but it's so full of music that it won't do. But maybe I could get another 20 GB one. It would be kind of fun to have an excuse for a second.

Where can I get an internal one? I didn't realise that was an option. And how could I get it installed?

Thanks for the help, guys.

 

[Bradcoe]

internal or ext.

Pricewatch.com for all your tech buying needs

Go there. You can look and buy the lowest priced external Firewire drive, or the lowest priced 2.5" internal notebook drive. Any ATA/66 IDE at 2.5" will fit inside your powerbook (someone double check that 'any' part for me). Getting it in there requires some work, but nothing impossible. I have a 60gig external firewire drive hooked to my iBook with 20gigs inside it. I love the external, but if I had the money , I would have just bought a 60gig internal. If you need space and are short on $, an external firewire (7200rpm unless its JUST for backup) is a great buy. remember that website above. GREAT place.

 

[kzoonut]

external

I just picked up an external 7200RPM 80GB IBM drive in a Oxford Chipset based 5.25" enclosure with Firewire for $147.00 from a vendor on http://www.pricewatch.com. While the 5.25" may seem like overkill for the 3.5" drive, it gives me a few more options (CD-RW, DVD, DVD-R) down the road. I know the 7200RPM drives run a little hot, so I looked for a case that had an internal fan as well - and got that with the enclosure I picked up.

The only hitch was that when I received the drive, the jumpers on the back of the drive were set to '32GB Clip' and it only showed up as a 32GB drive - so I had to open up the enclosure and set it back to 'Device 0', and then OS X recognized the full 80GB.

So far, I've found the drive to be a lot faster than the drive in my eMac. I used Carbon Copy Cloner to clone the drive and found the boot up speed to be about 20-30 secs faster with the external - even through the FW.

If the large enclosure size isn't an issue, you may want to consider this approach as an option. So far it's worked great for me!

 

[Hemingray]

Originally posted by shakespeare
Where can I get an internal one? I didn't realise that was an option. And how could I get it installed?

Thanks for the help, guys.

All your questions, answered here:

http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/powerbook_g4/PB_G4_HD_upgrade/pb_g4_hd_upgrade.html

This is the best site around for upgrading your Mac. Enjoy.

Replacing the internal drive on the Powerbook is usually a lower cost upgrade than buying an external Firewire drive. And since it's internal, you always have access to the extra space without having to carry along cables and external drives. Don't get me wrong, I love my portable firewire drives, but if I had to choose one drive upgrade for a Powerbook, I'd go with a larger internal drive. - Mike Breeden