External Hardrive Opinions

[wrxguy]

YOu can see my PB set up in my sig and i was looking on the "Post your PB setups" post and i noticed most people have external HD's....I was thinking about purchasing one of these but i wanted some opions first...
1. Aside from expanding your HD, do they make your PB perform better
2. What do you store on it? Games and such or what?
3. Are they worth your money?
4. Size/Brand recomendations

 

[TMA]

I don't have a Powerbook but i'll give our questions a bash, as they apply to external HD's in general with any computer.

1. Aside from expanding your HD, do they make your PB perform better
2. What do you store on it? Games and such or what?
3. Are they worth your money?
4. Size/Brand recomendations

1. No. That's unless you're running seriously low on space on your built in HD and your OS is starting to struggle to write files. Adding more storage would allow you to free up internal HD space, thus improving performance.
2. If I used an external HD I would probably keep the OS and Applications on the built in drive, and Documents on the external. Or just use the external as a backup.
3. Yes. External HD's are cheaper than buying internal HD's and offer more storage than upgrading your built in drive.
4. Size... Up to you, but always get more than you think you need! I've noticed drives over 250/320Gb start getting uneconomical unless you desperately need all that space. Brands... LaCie and Formac are quite popular, but there are many others.

Hope this helps!

 

[wrxguy]

awsome! thanks for your input

 

[puckhead193]

i have about 2 gigs left on my PB and i think i'm going to go with the lacie tripple interface 250 gig one

 

[Mitthrawnuruodo]

i have about 2 gigs left on my PB...

Is it even running?

 

[xsedrinam]

The LaCie d2 250Gb has worked well for me.
http://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?pid=10025
X

 

[Abstract]

Recently, I got an external case with FireWire, and a regular internal Seagate HD and put it in the external case and made an external HD that way.

 

[Mac_Freak]

YOu can see my PB set up in my sig and i was looking on the "Post your PB setups" post and i noticed most people have external HD's....I was thinking about purchasing one of these but i wanted some opions first...
1. Aside from expanding your HD, do they make your PB perform better

I got a G-Drive (FW 800, 250 GB, it is way faster than Lacie d2, check out Macworld lab test on the bottom of page) and I use it as backup as well as Photoshop scratch disk. And it has improved my performace when it comes using Photoshop. Just the other day I was working on a 450 MB file on my PB (spec in sig.) and after a while my scratch size went up to 4.5 GB, I would open other documents too for editing.
In my case fast scratch disk makes a lot of difference but if you don't use any Pro apps then you probably won't notice any difference.

 

[witness]

I use a bus powered FireWire drive that contains a laptop sized 100GB drive, so it's small enough to put in your pocket and will double the capacity of a PowerBook.

 

[AstrosFan]

wrxguy,
I have an external HD that I use primarily for intermittent file backup.
I back things up then store it at an offsite location to protect my files.
I chose one with both firewire and USB 2.0 connectivity and found them to be reasonably economical.
There are numerous threads referring to which external HD / good brands to buy.
Hope that helps!