Which External Hard Drive?

im...LOST

I realise that there is a thread very much like this one already but I need one with a FireWire cable aswell so it's a little different.

OK, so I want a 500 GB External HDD with a USB and a Firewire cable so that I can have ti hooked up to my Windows PC and my MacBook a the same time. I'm looking for something cheap and cheerful tbh and I don't care about the aesthetics at all.

I have narrowed it down to these ones and I'd be grateful if someone could let me know if they are a good HD's or not and which one should I got for etc.

Western Digital My Book Studio Edition 500GB, USB 2.0, eSata, Firewire - €130

Iomega 500GB MiniMax USB2/FW - €138.03

BUFFALO 500GB DriveStation COMBO USB2.0 /Firewire External Hard Drive Turbo USB - €135

Seagate FreeAgent Pro 500GB USB2.0/Firewire/eSATA - €139.00

IOMEGA TRIPLE INTERFACE 500 GB EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE USB 2.0/FIREWIRE 400/FIREWIRE 800 - €135

Thank you.

im...LOST

Is it all just a matter of looks now at this stage or should I see which one boasts the longest warranty?

abakan

dont forget the price of shipping??

im...LOST

abakan wrote: »

dont forget the price of shipping??

Cheers for that.

could someone also confirm that I can actuallydo the afore mentioned. Like, have the HD connected to my PC via USB and my Macbook via Firewire at the same time.

Thanks.

witnessmenow

Hi Im LOST,

I doubt it, but i'm not speaking from expreience.

The hard drive couldnt access 2 diffrent places of the disc at the same time

oisin

I tried that with an external drive which has USB and SATA interfaces connected to two different PCs - didn't work. Don't know about Firewire though.

im...LOST

witnessmenow wrote: »

The hard drive couldnt access 2 diffrent places of the disc at the same time

It makes sense.

I'm kinda inclined to go witht eh Aldi jobbie for 109 on Thursday in that case.

abakan

the ADLI hard drvie is 320GB i think,

There are 500GB on those sites you posts earlier with just the USB connection for 115 + post approx, more bang for you buck

http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.aspx?sku=333054

witnessmenow

Its 500gb,

It also has E-sata, which is class. My external has it and i'm very impressed , noticeably faster than USB

calex71

im...LOST wrote: »

Cheers for that.

could someone also confirm that I can actuallydo the afore mentioned. Like, have the HD connected to my PC via USB and my Macbook via Firewire at the same time.

Thanks.

wont work but .... why cant you just connect it to one or the other and share the drive out accross the network???????

witnessmenow

surely thats easier said than done with a mac and a PC?

Fionn

i've been looking around at some backup options too just stumbled onto this discussion, anyway i saw this about Western Digital Drives during my surfing which put me right off them.

I've so far looked at Freecom DataTank 800GB 2 disk

Buffalo DriveStation Duo

Seagate FreeAgent Pro 750GB FireWire 400 /USB 2.0/eSATA

Iomega UltraMax Desktop Hard Drive hard drive - 1 TB - FireWire / FireWire 800 / Hi-Speed USB

I'm leaning towards the Freecom at the moment, anyone have any opinions about anything else to be considered?
cheers

mathias

To be fair when it comes to reliability and hard drives , if you did a search on any hard drive manufacturer you would find the usual horror stories .... along the lines of , I got two of these both failed , I would never buy another ...blah blah blah ....

There are only a handful of hard drive manufacturers , ( fujitsu , hitachi , samsung , seagate , and WD) they all manufacture to the same standards ( its a fairly mature technology ) and the real issue here is that hard drives are incredibly sensitive electromechanical devices that do not take well to rough handling and the odd bang !

So there will always be drives dead on arrival and on pretty much a regular basis , especially if bought online. Theres simply no way to guarantee how well the unit will be treated in transit.

calex71

witnessmenow wrote: »

surely thats easier said than done with a mac and a PC?

very easy to setup see here , one thing to bear in mind is how you format the drive

i've very limited knowledge with all things mac and maybe someone else will clarify but if not sure if a mac can write to an ntfs file system i will read it though as far as i know.

If its shared out from windows then this wont be an issue but if ur connecting driectly to the mac to write to it and then maybe later want to connect it to windows to write files to it FAT32 is probably the best option for formatting. However theres a limit to partition size in FAT32 i thinks its 32gbs? (someone correct me on that)

Did I just open a can of worms? all things you need to bear in mind though

witnessmenow

Unless its changed recently(last 6 months maybe) macs cant write to NTFS,

The limit of partition size isnt that low anyways, i've a ~200gb fat 32 partition on one of my externals.

Its main problem is the fact that you cant have a file bigger than 4gbs on it (not good for isos and the like). I make a small ntfs partition to fit these files on.