[MW Forums]

If you’re beginning to count down the remaining free megabytes on your hard drive, or if you’re finally getting serious about backing up your data, you need more storage. But for most Mac users, increasing storage means buying a new external hard drive that includes fast and convenient FireWire connections. more

[Nobody]

It is so easy to just assemble your own FireWire HD/CD/DVD burners with enclosure, and it is by far the most cost effective way to get mass storage. I have 5 of them.
Just like to give fair warning to users headed to external storage. Should you need to use a disk rescue utility or even set S.M.A.R.T. on the drives in their external cases, they are not identified or accessable behind the Oxford bridge used to run the IDE drives through FW.
Apple would greatly add to the Mac comfort factor and sense of security by providing a disk utility that actually was beyond mildly useless. Also could they please get off Roxio's back and let us make custom bootable CD/DVDs that contain a more useful selection of utilities for emergencies.

[uchuugaka]

This is a good report.
Of course it's only a small sampling of solutions available on the market.
Some specs to consider in addition:
Interface type between the drive and it's bridge controller... IDE? SATA? etc...
It is another important point of potential bottle-necking in the device's througput.
WHICH type of USB 2? there are 3 out there, and often the product does indicate which one, thoug the names for them are obfuscated. All will work, but mileage will vary!
Enough can't be said about drive speed...
How about the firewire raid solutions? They're all over the market here in Japan now. Usually marketed as a DCR storage solution. often in terabyte packages with room for more in the case.
Lastly, the controller chips inside tend to matter, as well as the firmware... some perform better than others.
A few other factors to consider:
often the intial purchase of a case w/drive is cheaper than buying an empty case.
Knowing the full specs of the case and it's bridge will let you consider the future replacement of the drive.
Oh! a few more points.. what drive is inside??? different brand drives will perform differently at the same spec. (some have more platters and more heads to read them, this tends to be faster, like raid is, but tends to be more fragile.)

[maglev]

This comparison seems to have left out LaCie's d2 Extreme series which has the triple interface and would seem to be a good option compared to the others in the desktop category. Why the omission? I bring this up since I was just about ready to order one of the Lacie d2s.

[riscx]

Would it be too terribly difficult to make each of the drives name in the info box a link to the companies product page of that drive? I'm in the market to purchase a few external hard drives and this would make it easier to complete my decision making process. Great article, thx!

[Felix001]

I've got the LaCie 600GB Big Disk Extreme with Triple Interface and RAID 0 and am extremely happy with it. Fast and quiet. I'd buy another in a heartbeat. Course, with RAID 0, if one of the drives fails you're hosed but I'm willing to chance that for the speed.

[bigh]

It will be interesting to see the direction Apple takes after the Intel switch. It's been documented by barefeats.com that the FW800 bus on the G5s is "crippled," and Apple hasn't addressed the issue. Perhaps they're moving away from their standard? I have personally gone with SATA instead, since it is more ubiquitous (especially for cross-platform use), faster, and hot-swappable.
As for portable drives, I don't view the lack of FW800 as a negative, since a single drive doesn't tax the FW400 bus, and FW400 is much more common. While I'm at it, I'll sing the praises of Smartdisk - I've been using one of their Firelite drives daily for 4 years now, without a hitch. One of my favorite purchases over the last four years.

[OM_user]

I was wondering the same thing. We have several of the LaCie d2 drives here, and they are good drives. I can't understand why the were omitted from this report, especially since they have triple interfaces and aren't even that expensive. It would seem they are an almost ideal choice for this article, considering their specs.

[Machound]

In reply to:

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Years ago, when Apple shipped its first Macs with 1GB hard drives, I remember asking myself, Who would ever need that much storage?

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That's funny. I remember asking myself the same question when I got my first 5 MB hard drive back in the early 80's, and OMG was it fast! Who needed all that speed?
I too have a LaCie Big Disk Extreme dual interface (FW-400, FW-800: Oxford 922) which is going strong at more than 18 months. It does take a while to spin up those two 250 GB drives one-at-a-time whenever my computer puts it to sleep... which takes roughly 20 seconds for spin up. Single drive enclosures have the advantage of faster spin-up and optimal heat dissipation. I really like LaCie's design of putting the power switch on the front of the case. Why hasn't anybody else thought of doing that?

[bigpics]

I was excited to find this story on the day I planned to order such a drive! I'd already done a lot of research and had narrowed down the field.
/forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif
I was really disappointed that you left out the world's largest manufacturer of hard drives (Seagate) since they and Iomega were the two drives I'd narrowed things down to.
/forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/mad.gif
And after two complete Maxtor One Touch Failures (MTBF: five months, and the 3rd has been up and running for about 8 months), I want a new brand. I find it very significant that Seagate's now offering a five year warranty
Any comments from ye olde editors or anyone else with Seagate experience??

[Flavum]

The LaCie drives are certainly worth including with the desktop offerings, as their performance and cost make them a competitive option. Personally, I will never deal with OWC after an absolutely HORRIBLE experience with them, but that's another topic altogether. Tom

[davebarnes]

IOmega = most likely to declare bankruptcy

[ncwildfoto]

One important factor to consider was left out - manufacturers warranty - after paying a lot of money for a Lacie Big disk, I recieved this message from Tech. Support after having problems:
"Unfortunately, the drive is past its one-year warranty and we are unable
to repair it. We do not perform out-of-warranty repairs as we often no
longer have parts and it is usually more cost effective to purchase a
new unit. Depending on what is wrong with the drive, parts may be
salvageable. We are unable to assist with any of this, but if the
mechanism itself is dead, a new one can be placed inside the case. If
the mechanism is still good, it may be installed elsewhere--either in a
computer or inside a new empty case."
So, it's important to find out if you can even have your drive repaired !!

[Nobody]

In reply to:

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Personally, I will never deal with OWC after an absolutely HORRIBLE experience with them

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Interesting you should mention them.
Their tactic with my CPU upgrade, which overheated from 1st installation, was to stall me till it was too late to return it. Not that I had any faith that they would give me a workable replacement, as they stubbornly refused to confirm that they would test it under excessive heat. I'm stuck with it still.
Their attitude sucked. The chain of emails from them left me with the impression that English was not their first language and/or they had failed Comprehension 101.