Powerbook Backup Plan - Firewire 800 Hard Drives

[grrr223]

I am in the market for a BIG hard drive. Something like 200-250 GB external firewire (preferably FW800) to add additional storage to my 15" Powerbook who's 80 GB capacity is getting quite full.

Here's my plan:

I want a hard drive that big so that I can do a complete backup of my Powerbook say weekly, yet still have room to actually be adding additional storage capacity to my current setup. I figure I have been VERY VERY VERY (I hope I don't jinx myself here) lucky as far as hard drives go, never having had one fail, and it's about time I get a decent backup plan going. Also, I think I would cry if I lost the year's of my life I've spent ripping, tagging, and rating my music collection.

My questions are as follows:

1. Any suggestions on a backup plan to accomplish the above? I am a .Mac member so would backup successfully accomplish what I want?
2. Would it be beneficial to partition the external drive so that there is an 80GB[ish] section to back up to? I think this makes sense to separate the backup area from the remaining storage area. Or would it make more sense to have one continuous area to say let my iTunes library grow to 150 GB?
3. Does anyone have any suggestions on any good 200GB or larger external FW hard drives? I'd like to spend $350 or less on it. Any brands to stay away from would help too.
4. How much of a difference would FW 800 make in my setup? I will mainly be transferring files for backup purposes. I'd like to get a digital camera someday soon. So the external drive is mainly a repository for media. Would there be any noticable improvement in say playing a Divx file off the external drive if it were FW800 as opposed to 400?

Things like that .

Thanks in advance, this place has solved many of my problems in the past, I know you won't let me down this time.

 

[kwajo.com]

check out this thread i started today
https://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=54149

 

[musicjon]

Backup

Don't know much about the Firewire HD, but I have been very pleased with the Apple Backup software. I used it to burn everything onto DVD when I had to return a computer to Apple.

It would probably help to know what you would be storing on the new HD. Digital photos, mp3's and word documents? Digital Video and Audio for content creation?

Best of luck finding answers

 

[rainman::|:|]

getting a FW800 drive will do you no good, it's not any faster than FW400-- hard drives are actually slightly slower than FW400. Don't spend extra for it, at any rate.

paul

 

[Sun Baked]

The original FW400-to-ATA bridge chipsets sucked.

The FW800 drive actually allows the drives to operated at their maximum speed. Quite close to the ATA-133 native speed.

Plus a lot of the FW800 drives also include a USB2.0 port -- if you need the capability.

http://www.barefeats.com/fire35.html

 

[virividox]

i have a weibetech fw800 its reall nippy and quick, suffers tho when writting ltos of small files, but all drives do.

200 gig, make sure the hd they use is western digital and not maxtor.

 

[grrr223]

Thanks everyone. What do you think about these drives?

They're USB 2.0 (which might be useful if I want to bring it to work or something) and Firewire [400] enclosures with Western Digital hard drives up to 250 GB in capacity? I think I might go with one of those and use back up.

Any suggestions on whether or not to partition the larger drive so it has a powerbook sized [80gb] spot to do a full backup on a regular basis?

Thanks guys, you rule!