external HD question

[pank]

I'm going to get a new external HD for my iMac (2.8 extreme / 4GB of ram).
I'm looking at the WD mybook (which I have one now) and the Seagate FreeAgent. They both look good.

My question is if I get a USB or Firewire external drive is it a good idea or safe to use that as a raid 1 setup. The one thing I miss about my G5 is the internal HD. I'd really like a raid 1 for a constant clone/backup. I've just never thought about using an external HD to do such a thing.

Also I'm guessing it really won't matter if I go USB or FireWire. From what I've seen the speeds are nearly the same (correct me if I am wrong).

I was just curious if it was alright to do. Not sure if it would slow things down since it was not internal, etc.

Also am I safe in assuming that if I plug in a new drive and set it up as a mirror I will "not" lose my data on my main drive?

Any help is greatly appreciated.
Thanks.

 

[funkychunkz]

USB will bottleneck any ATA harddrive (or newer), as will FW 400. Although theorerically USB is faster, it relies on the CPU to do a lot of protocol work whereas FW has a dedicated card. If at all possible, go with a Firewire 800 external.

 

[Iscariot]

USB will bottleneck any ATA harddrive (or newer), as will FW 400. Although theorerically USB is faster, it relies on the CPU to do a lot of protocol work whereas FW has a dedicated card. If at all possible, go with a Firewire 800 external.

Truth. FW externals end up with better speeds.

 

[pank]

Thanks for the replies.

I ended up keeping and erasing my 250GB mybook Firewire drive. I'll just use that as a clone. I picked up a 1TB mybook USB drive at Best Buy yesterday. I could not pass up the price of $249.99 for that much storage (USB or not).

To be honest I used CCC to clone the Firewire drive and it took 1 hour and 8 minutes. It only took 1 hour and 3 minutes via the USB drive I picked up.

So for backups it seems the USB will be fine and I still have the Firewire as well.