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Good FireWire 800 Drive?

TuffLuffJimmy

TuffLuffJimmy

macrumors G3
Original poster
Apr 6, 2007
9,036
180
Portland, OR
I'm looking for a reasonable FireWire 800 enclosure, but I'm not quite sure what to look for. I have a 320GB USB drive that I use to store important files to and right now I back my whole hard disk up to a NAS. But I'm moving out soon so I'll need a way to back up my computer using Time Machine and I'm getting into CS4 and I'm a heavy Aperture user so I was wondering if I would need another drive for that or if I should just let time machine back up my internal drive.

What would be the best solution?
 
Western Digital Passport Studio for Mac is a great drive. Up to 500Gb, FW400/800 and USB2.

WD also introduced 1TB Passport drives, but they are only USB2
 
Time vs money. The quickest backups are with FW800. The least expensive backup solution is with USB2.0. If you only have 320GB or less to back up I would favor the USB2.0 solution. It works and would be less expensive.

I'm using Time machine to do my backups. It's very easy to use. However, I haven't had to put it to the test yet.

Another backup solution is CCC, Carbon Copy Cloner, which is a free download. I can make a copy of your MacIntosh HD drive in your PC which is bootable.
 
xlii said:
Well, you didn't say which size drive (2.5" or 3.5"). I own a 3.5" fw800 enclosure that I really like and I just ordered a fw800 2.5" enclosure from newegg which should get here somtime tomorrow.
Click to expand...

I'm open to either. Which would be smarter in the long run? Are 3.5inch drives cheaper? I may end up going the 3.5 inch route as they're faster, but they're cases are much larger and probably noisier, yes?
 
Jimmy, take a look at the newegg website and price the 2.5" and 3.5" drives and drive enclosures. As a rule the 3.5" drives hold more data and are faster. The 2.5" drives are much more portable. If you are on the go a 2.5" drive backup solution would be easy to take with you. Most of the 3.5" drives need their own power supply. Most of the 2.5" drives are powered from just the FW800 bus or the usb2.0 bus, no bulky power supply needed. Better... comes down to more money. Good enough for what you want to do... any of these solutions should work out fine for you.
 
Teh Don Ditty said:
Western Digital Passport Studio for Mac is a great drive. Up to 500Gb, FW400/800 and USB2.

WD also introduced 1TB Passport drives, but they are only USB2
Click to expand...

Jimmy this is a great solution too. I priced it the other day... $199 at the Apple store, $180 at newegg, if memory serves me. My daughter has the 250GByte USB2.0 version of this 2.5" drive. It is quiet, she uses it to back up her mbp and because it is just a small box and a little 12" or so usb cable she can put it in her laptop bag and take it with her as she is a student and needs to be moble.
 
TuffLuffJimmy said:
I'm open to either. Which would be smarter in the long run? Are 3.5inch drives cheaper? I may end up going the 3.5 inch route as they're faster, but they're cases are much larger and probably noisier, yes?
Click to expand...

Buy an openable case for the size of your computer's drive, so that you can also use it for doing upgrades. Unless you want a drive bigger than 500GB (actually, now 1TB), which would require for it to be 3.5".

Go to OWC for good bundles.
 
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