Which External Hard Drive should I buy?

[paddykev]

Im in the uk as well but gonna be purchasing a Western Digital My book pro, i checked on ebay and amazon and i think the cheapest i've seen it so far was on amazon for like £99 inc vat and free shipping for a 500gb triple interface one. Has anyone seen them for cheaper?
Also a question about the external HD, will front row still be able to read the movies/music/photos etc i put in the external HD or does those media files have to stay inside the finder 'movies' pictures folder etc?

 

[applemax]

Im in the uk as well but gonna be purchasing a Western Digital My book pro, i checked on ebay and amazon and i think the cheapest i've seen it so far was on amazon for like £99 inc vat and free shipping for a 500gb triple interface one. Has anyone seen them for cheaper?
Also a question about the external HD, will front row still be able to read the movies/music/photos etc i put in the external HD or does those media files have to stay inside the finder 'movies' pictures folder etc?

Sorry - what does triple interface mean? Does that mean it has 4 outputs (eg USB, Firewire, eSata etc...)

Also, is the Seagate FreeAgent bootable on a Mac?

 

[paddykev]

has USB 2.0, firewire 400 and firewire 800

 

[smartalic34]

I have a Seagate FreeAgent Pro 320GB w/ Firewire and I love it! No complaints, speedy, reliable, and looks great too

 

[coil]

Concerning the Seagate Freeagent. I have one so here's my take on it. I do not like the fact that to use the firewire connections I have to unscrew the USB and SATA interface and screw in the Firewire 400. Really lame in my book. The thing only sits upright. You can't lay it horizontal due to design. I've knocked mine over with a fairly light touch of my hand as I went to reach for something. I love Seagate drives but only their external interfaces have always left much to be desired. I don't recommend these to anyone and have tried to encourage my video students to look at something else for external drives.

I have a number of LaCie drives the older ones (not the newer porche or lego inspired stuff) that can be upright or horizontal and love them. Never had a problem. Even when upright they are much more stable then the Freeagent.

My other choice, as was echoed here is the OWC drives. Great cases, Great Customer Service and Fast.


phil

 

[grimgraphix]

for applemax re: usb versus firewire

I want to stress one thing to you about the advantage of using an external firewire drive with a mac.

I recently had my hard drive crash in my iBook. Because I had a firewire external drive, I was able to reinstall my OS onto the firewire drive and boot up off of it. You can not do this with a USB drive.

It took me a week to get a new internal drive and I just replaced it in my iBook this evening... but my iBook was down for less than a day, simply because one of my drives was firewire capable.

Yes, USB drives are generally cheaper and you have more choices... but if you intend on getting two drives, make sure at least one of them is a firewire drive. Especially if you own a mac.

grim

 

[grimgraphix]

Correction from my last post

power pc chip users must use firewire for booting off an external disk. I just read that intelmac users can use firewire or USB2.

My bad.

Keep in mind though, that for things like video streaming from an external drive... fire wire gives a constant through put of data, whereas USB 1 and 2 pass data in short bursts of information. That is why you find firewire outputs on digital video cameras. Also, firewire drives can be daisy chained via firewire, up to 62 hard drives in a row, without any loss in speed accessing any disk in that array.