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Suggestions for External Hard drive?

F

fussball

macrumors regular
Original poster
May 7, 2003
106
0
I have an iBook 700 and the 30GB HD is not cutting it anymore, and also I already lost all the data on it once last year (during final exams, to boot), so I want a larger HD to back everything up with. It doesn't need to be portable or anything, just a drive to keep in my dorm room and back up all of my stuff on. It would probably be best as a FW drive. I am thinking something of a size such that I can use it for a while- maybe 60 or 80 GB any suggestions? There is a ton of stuff available and I am not really sure where to start.
 
I suggest OWC . I have one of their drives, and unlike most other drives, theres no fan and the case is really well made. This means that its as close to silent as it gets with computers. Its fast, reliable, and I got it for a pretty reasonable price.

I got the 120GB USB 2.0/Firewire version.
 
If it were me, I'd roll my own by getting an ADS Pyro Drive kit (or similar) and a good-sized IDE hard drive -- may as well think big and get 100 gigs or so. It'll be easily upgradable to faster drives later, or I could change my mind and put in an external DVD burner, etc.

In fact, I'm doing just the opposite right now. I have a Pioneer DVD burner in a Firewire enclosure, but since my 12" PB (coming on Thursday!) will have one built in, I'm thinking of swapping it out with a big hard drive to use as external storage.
 
I wanted a back up for the hard drive in my iMac so I bought an 120 GB Maxtor drive (about $100 at Overstock.com) and simply bought a firewire case to put it (about $30 in the clearance bin at MicroCenter).
That gave me 120 GB of external storage for just under $1/GB. That give me twice the storage for the same money as an off the shelf firewire drive.
 
I highly recommend the EzQuest Cobra line. They're pretty cheap, and the fastest of the offered drives. The enclosure is on the bigger side, but it's still perfectly portable and will fit on your desk just fine. Also, they come pre-formatted to work nicely between both Macs and PCs.

This is the one I have: http://www.smalldog.com/product/40454
 
either buy a prebuilt drive from OWC or buy the pieces from them and build it yourself. building is super easy and real cheap.
 
.mac users get discounts on smart disk external HD's. I got an 80 gig HD for 90 dollars after the 30 dollar mail in rebate. It works good. It doesn't have the sex appeal of the lacies but it looks fine.
 
I ended up getting a Fantom Drives 80GB external drive. At $100 is was hard to beat the price, and it is a 7200rpm dirve, in a nice looking case.
 
Build your own!

I would recommend that you build your own. Get an external FW case, and an IDE harddrive. And voila! You would be set.

Two things to pay attention to. First, get a 120 drive MAXIMUM, I tried to go above that and I had issues.

Second, find a good deal on the external case and the hard drive. www.slickdeals.net and www.techbargains.com will let you know when you can get a fast 120GB HD with a nice rebate.

Enjoy!
 
Originally posted by crazzyeddie
I suggest OWC . I have one of their drives, and unlike most other drives, theres no fan and the case is really well made.
Click to expand...
Hmm, those OWC enclosures look the same as the Macpower ones:

http://www.macpower.com.tw/products/

Not that this is a bad thing... just nice to know who makes them (I'll probably be getting a Macpower Icecube myself to complement and back up my iBook's 40 gigger) :)
 
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