G-Drive Mini vs WD Passport

[dndandrea]

i have the current gen macbook pro and im looking for a quick, quiet, small, hard drive. 250 gigabytes is plenty enough for me but bigger is always better.

the main purpose of this hdd will be to put all my movies on it and bigger files that i don't use all the time. it will be main just to free up my hard drive. majority of the time i will have this hooked up to the macbook so i can access all the files on it easily (hence why i want it to be quick, so it's like my normal HD).

G-Tech G-Drive Mini 250gb
+ has firewire 800
+ small
+ cheap
- i've never used, never saw, and never heard of g-tech until now.
- have to buy online (in order to get a good price)

Western Digital 320GB Portable passport
+ can pick up at a local retail store instead of online (good price)
+ cheap
+ small
+ very reliable brand name
- no firewire

i don't know how quiet each one is and don't necessarily know how fast they are. im assuming the g-drive would be faster since it runs through firewire.

please help decide!

 

[jll62]

I have both a 250 GB and a 320 GB G-Drive mini. The 320 is the primary disk for my image collection, so I'm using it whenever I'm in Aperture. The 250 contains a bootable back up created by SuperDuper. Some question these due to the use of Hitachi drives, but I like them.

I would make sure you go for a disk that has Firewire. Don't let local pickup options sway you away from FW800.

 

[rumorguy]

Owc

Other World Computing, Newertech, for an external hard drive, very quiet, cool temperature; great support; and for backup software use SuperDuper--the best.

 

[Cave Man]

Neither. Get a separate enclosure (such as Macally's) and hard drive and assemble them.

 

[dndandrea]

I have both a 250 GB and a 320 GB G-Drive mini. The 320 is the primary disk for my image collection, so I'm using it whenever I'm in Aperture. The 250 contains a bootable back up created by SuperDuper. Some question these due to the use of Hitachi drives, but I like them.

I would make sure you go for a disk that has Firewire. Don't let local pickup options sway you away from FW800.

Yea i think im going to try and get the g-drive mini. the only thing im somewhat worried about is a company on ebay claiming the hard drive is brand new when it might be refurbished. there's no way to really tell right? im a little worried buying a refurbished hdd that might break on me with tons of files on it.

Other World Computing, Newertech, for an external hard drive, very quiet, cool temperature; great support; and for backup software use SuperDuper--the best.

seems a bit too expensive for me but i'll look into it, thanks.

Neither. Get a separate enclosure (such as Macally's) and hard drive and assemble them.

i don't plan on building something that is meant to be inside a computer. i don't have much experience in the tech field and i plan to keep a high resale value for this thing incase i sell it. thanks tho

bump.
is there a NOTICEABLE difference between the g-drive mini 250gb 5400rpm and the 7200rpm? i believe both have 8mb cache? not sure
found a good deal for the g-tech g-drive mini 250gb 5400rpm for $87.99 and 7200rpm for $109 at BH Photography.

 

[CaptainChunk]

G-Tech is company owned by Hitachi that mostly markets external hard drives for A/V professionals, although they do have a few consumer-oriented models in the mix, including the G-DRIVE Mini. IMHO (and I'm a video editor), the lack of FW800 in a small form factor drive shouldn't necessarily be a reason to write off one that uses USB instead. Unless you're dealing with reading and writing large files frequently (like a video editor would), you'll see very little real world difference (other than the time it takes to copy a movie over, perhaps) AND you would be more inclined to buy a full-sized drive for that purpose anyway.

For one that would use the drive mostly as a backup solution, I'd probably go with the aforementioned WD and get more space.