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field pi

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Oct 26, 2008
23
0
New York City
Hello all,

I'm hoping to get some quick opinions because I want to make a purchase today. Here in NYC a store is starting their "Black Friday" deals early. Yeah I might hunt around on the internet and find other prices (Glyph $299 for instance), but I want to walk into a store today and buy.

There are two external drives there that look good to me, both with FW800/400 / USB 2.0 ports, both 7200 rpm, both 16MB cache.

1) Glyph GT050q 500GB Quad Interface External Hard Drive. Normally $319, selling for $229 (I got this price by phone).
2) LaCie 1TB d2 Quadra External Hard Drive. Normally $249, selling for $199.

With the Glyph at $229 and the LaCie at $199, I could consider the $30 negligible if the Glyph were the better.

The Glyph is $90 off its usual price, $70 off if you go by online prices. That's huge percentage-wise. The LaCie drops $50 bucks, which is less but not shabby. Shabbier though if you consider some onliners selling for $225.

But the Glyph has half the capacity of the LaCie. It may be a natural impulse to be space-greedy in these situations, but might the Glyph be a more preferable drive for sound apps, having Seagate SATA drive mechanism and all?

Even at the 1TB capacity, isn't it stinky that the LaCie is saddled with a 16MB cache, or is this mitigated by some other factor?

Neither is bus-powered, but I should mention that the LaCie has a wall wart adaptor. Glyph has a fan. I have a prev-gen Glyph, GT050 without the "q", and it always worked fine, quiet enough. Never owned or worked a LaCie.

Thoughts? Thank you all,
fp
 
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