Is USB2 just as fast as FW400 in real world settings?
At what point do you upgrade to some like a (poor man's) Xserve? I have two external hard drives and it's already a hassle to keep track of what's on which drive and be plugging and unplugging various cables. Once you have three or four drives and their content becomes invaluable, it seems like a some sort of networked, Raid-1 enabled, fileserver becomes worth the money. How much would a reliable one cost? (I'm curious myself.)
I do a fair amount of creative digital work including family videos, and I personally consider that data invaluable. That's why I bought a 1 Terabyte WD MyBook. It has two internal 500 GB hard drives that can be set to mirror raid, which is what I've done. That gives me some peace of mind. So far the drive has been quite nice, and if you look it up on Amazon, don't pay attention to all the complaints about noise. I'm sure that was a problelm once, but a firmware upgrades sets the fan speed lower and my drive at least makes very little noise.
I'd also say I need a hub for all this data clutter. I wish my hub could be an external monitor (30 inch please!). I also wish Dell would incorporate Firewire ports into their external monitors like Apple does--that would clinch the deal for me. However that brings up another question. Is there a meaningful difference any longer between USB2 and FW400? I expect FW800 is substantially faster, but I have an early model Macbook Pro, which only has FW400. I ask because I may be better off connecting the MyBook with USB instead of FW (as I'm doing now), thereby allowing me to conveniently attach my two external hard drives and printer to one USB hub. Hmm, any advice?
