FW400 or FW800 for external backup drive

[netnothing]

Looking at the OWC Elite's for a 500GB backup-only drive (going to be used primarily for Time Machine with Leopard).

Should I go with the 3 way interface with the FW800, or would the FW400 2 way be fine for me?

As a followup...I'm assuming I should stay away from using USB?

-Kevin

 

[CanadaRAM]

FW400 is fine for backup. Spend the difference on a SuperDuper license

 

[netnothing]

I'm assuming I should also stick with an external drive for backups? I don't physically need to take it anywhere.

-Kevin

 

[CanadaRAM]

The advantage of an external is if your machine fries, you can take the external drive to another machine and keep working.

 

[netnothing]

The advantage of an external is if your machine fries, you can take the external drive to another machine and keep working.

Ah...I see. So I'm guess the logic behind this is, if the machine is hit with some electrical surge and wipes out all components including drives, that the external should have survived?

Makes sense. Thanks!

-Kevin

 

[MikeyTree]

Ah...I see. So I'm guess the logic behind this is, if the machine is hit with some electrical surge and wipes out all components including drives, that the external should have survived?

That's right. It's not just surges though. Dropped laptops, spilled cups of coffee, stolen computers, overly curious dogs, etc.

I'm curious if there's much difference between USB and FW400. I got a great deal on a USB 500 gig drive, $70 less than the equivalent FW800, and $50 less than the equivalent FW400. I'm going to use it for computer backup and media storage, so I don't know if the extra speed is worth the extra cost.

 

[aliquis-]

Looking at the OWC Elite's for a 500GB backup-only drive (going to be used primarily for Time Machine with Leopard).

Should I go with the 3 way interface with the FW800, or would the FW400 2 way be fine for me?

As a followup...I'm assuming I should stay away from using USB?

-Kevin

Atleast in bare feats test with USB 2.0 and FW the FW was almost sata-speed and USB 2.0 where very slow. Might have been the USB 2.0 case thought but I think USB 2.0 is always worse, stay with fw.

 

[kolax]

To be honest, I've noticed very little difference between FW400 and 800 when using my external hard drive.

I don't think the hard drive can provide full speed Firewire 800 can it? FW800 is twice as fast as 400 yet for use with my hard drive it is barely that much faster at all.