External HDD advice please.

[doktordoris]

Hullo,

Earlier today I came to realise that my PC is redundant.

I bought my 15 MBP to use away from home and to have a taste of what mac ownership was like.

Since I got my MBP 7 weeks ago I have used my PC a handful of times.

I normally play games on my 360 or PS3, but I kept my PC just for games and file storage on my home network. However I now realise that it is ludicrous to run a thousand watt PC just to store files on for my mac to very rarely access.

I have decided to take one of the 1TB drives out of my PC and stick it in a box which I plan to attach to my mac with firewire. Then I can keep backups and media on it and stop having to run my power guzzling PC.

What I would like is some advice as to what kind of enclosure I need to buy, and is firewire really worthwhile?
I must admit I am attracted to FW because I associate it with macs and I have never had a FW device before.

As I said before the external drive will be used for back-ups and storage of movies and music that I don't need quick access to, but I wish to keep.

So in short is FW really worth the expense for files which will be rarely accessed, and when they are accessed time isn't that important?

And what brand/model of enclosures do MR readers recommend?

Ta

Doris

 

[m85476585]

Firewire 800 is worth it if the alternative is USB. eSATA would be faster but its buggy using expresscards. Just about any FW800 enclosure that gets good reviews on Newegg should work.

 

[cloroxbleach4]

Firewire is soo much quicker than a usb connection. I didn't believe it til I got one myself. It's shocking actually.

 

[davidlv]

OWC also has a wide selection of cases for SATA 3.5" drives. You do realize you will have to copy the data off the drive while it is in the PC, then extract it, and put the drive in the new external case, then create a Mac partition (GUID is the default for intel machines) and last copy the data back to the newly formated HD. Working around the Windows type of partition is probably possible but probably not worth the potential for trouble.
Firewire 800 is quite a bit faster than USB 2 in my experience, for smaller files USB 2 is still good enough. The Firewire cases are more expensive, but if within your budget, highly recommended. I have heard good things about the Mercury Elite-Pro series but never tried one myself.

 

[doktordoris]

OWC also has a wide selection of cases for SATA 3.5" drives. You do realize you will have to copy the data off the drive while it is in the PC, then extract it, and put the drive in the new external case, then create a Mac partition (GUID is the default for intel machines) and last copy the data back to the newly formated HD. Working around the Windows type of partition is probably possible but probably not worth the potential for trouble.
Firewire 800 is quite a bit faster than USB 2 in my experience, for smaller files USB 2 is still good enough. The Firewire cases are more expensive, but if within your budget, highly recommended. I have heard good things about the Mercury Elite-Pro series but never tried one myself.

Thanks, I don't care about what is on the HDD now.
I plan to just pop it in my enclosure and format it.

Thanks again for your help.

doris