Seagate Freeagent Desk for Mac (or not?)

[Cue]

During my research for an external drive to use it as a backup drive for time machine I ended up on the aforementioned.

Looking for reviews/prices I realised that there are 2 versions available, one "for mac" and one not. More specifically the difference between the two is the extra FW400/800 connections which (the 800) based on reviews offers as much as 40% speed increase.

Then there is the price. I can get the USB2.0 only version for 36 EUR (~49 USD) compared to the FW for 135 EUR (~179 USD)

Although the benchmarks are indisputable, my question is whether I will notice (apart from the initial backup) that 40% speed difference every hour that time machine runs.

Thanks in advance. Your help is really appreciated every time

 

[mcavjame]

Time Machine happens in the background. The only time I notice, is when I get slight lag on drives that are getting backed up.

I personally like the FW800 in case I ever use drives for video capture or other more intensive tasks.

 

[miles01110]

I don't think FW800 is worth the extra cost. Most of the time the main factor in TM backups is the speed at which it indexes your files, not the speed of the transfer protocol (ie FW vs USB).

 

[mreg376]

During my research for an external drive to use it as a backup drive for time machine I ended up on the aforementioned.

Looking for reviews/prices I realised that there are 2 versions available, one "for mac" and one not. More specifically the difference between the two is the extra FW400/800 connections which (the 800) based on reviews offers as much as 40% speed increase.

Then there is the price. I can get the USB2.0 only version for 36 EUR (~49 USD) compared to the FW for 135 EUR (~179 USD)

Although the benchmarks are indisputable, my question is whether I will notice (apart from the initial backup) that 40% speed difference every hour that time machine runs.

Thanks in advance. Your help is really appreciated every time

I use a large (although very small in size) Seagate Freeagent Go for my Time Machine backups. It uses a USB connection. While I'm not a big fan of the reliability of USB, this drive is so quiet and invisible in its mission that I often feel I have to look at the drive contents just to make sure it's still working. Which it is.

 

[tamasvarga67]

You should be OK with the USB version. After the initial backup the speed doesn't really matter. My TM is a naked 1TB Hitachi drive with a BlacX USB dock with two 500GB partitions - one for MBP one for Mini - and it is just fine.

 

[ddeadserious]

Firewire is nice and more reliably fast, but USB should be fine after the first backup, like stated above.

 

[Cue]

Thanks for your feedback. I just purchased the drive today.
So far I'm really pleased with it.

It's silent and I don't notice any performance hit whatsoever on Leopard. Not to mention the price

Just started doing the initial backup.
Kudos