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External hard drive

  • 21-05-2008 9:15am
    #1
    luckat
    Closed Accounts Posts: 5,366 ✭✭✭


    I have two external hard drives - one 160GB pocket drive for bringing with me if I'm going places, one 250GB big drive for full backup.

    That's been the way since my G4 PowerBook.

    Moved to MacBook and decided to upgrade a bit - got 4GB of RAM and a 250GB SATA drive (the kind MacBooks use) from OWC.

    OWC has a rebate system, you can give back your old hard drive and memory, very nice; it kills me sending stuff to the recycle centre, and no one really wants 512MB RAM chips.

    But when the new drive turned up there was a slight problem - I'd not realised that the SATA drive wouldn't fit into my old... whatever non-SATA is called... pocket drive's enclosure.

    So I'll have to get a new enclosure for the new drive, so I can clone my system on it before installing it.

    This leaves me with a slight difficulty. I'll now have two external enclosures with drives in them:

    1) The old enclosure with the 160GB drive in it, which uses FireWire 400 or FireWire 800 (the MacBook, for some obscure reason, only uses FireWire 400!)

    2) The new enclosure with the 120GB drive (currently in my MacBook), which will be able to use USB 2

    (Is FireWire 400 slower or faster than USB 2?)

    I don't really want the house littered with portable hard drives, so would probably sell one - but which? I like FireWire, and the old 160GB drive is 40GB bigger than the new 120GB drive.

    But on the other hand, the old external case won't fit any new drive I might have to buy if the hard drive gives up the ghost at any stage.

    Thoughts?


Comments

  • #2
    WUSBDesign
    Closed Accounts Posts: 549 ✭✭✭WUSBDesign


    My 2.5" HDDs, collected from upgrading of my PowerPC and Intel Macs' HDDs, are encountering a situation similar to yours - IDE/PATA drives with FireWire/USB enclosures and SATA drives with *only* USB enclosures. For some reason, FW enclosures for 2.5" SATA drives are rare or just bloody expensive.

    A stopgap solution would be to get a USB-SATA adaptor. EUR10 or less.

    Oh, there are FW enclosures for 3.5" SATA HDDs, but this is getting ugly (since you need to adapt the 2.5" HDDs to the 3.5" HDD form factor) - so I passed on this option.

    And oh, USB2.0 is rate at 480Mbps peak (just as ISPs rate their ADSL line speeds) and FW is rated as 400Mbps burst/sustained.


  • #3
    nialler
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 896 ✭✭✭nialler


    Apple's firewire implemetation is much better than their usb to be honest but you pay a slight premium for firewire enclosures. If you're in a hurry maplins have 3.5" fw400/usb2 enclosures or just down the road past jervis centre there's a little computer shop on the corner of strand street where you can get them pretty cheaply. Otherwise komplett will do em pretty handily. Clone your drive then you're sorted.


  • #4
    luckat
    Closed Accounts Posts: 5,366 ✭✭✭luckat


    I'll never deal with Maplins again - used to buy from them and bring all my non-techie friends there, and then I bought some DVD-Rs from them and they were duds; they refused rudely to replace them, said my Mac was at fault.

    I figured if I couldn't trust them on a €30 pack of DVDs, I wasn't going back to them for more expensive things ever again, and I haven't.

    WUSB, I'm terrible with figures. Does that mean that the USB 2 is faster?

    (What I can't understand is why Apple wouldn't have Firewire 800 on the Macbook. This sounds nutty. I wouldn't have bought it if I'd realised.)

    I'm half thinking of buying another 250GB laptop drive and a SATA enclosure, and then selling the 120GB SATA laptop drive and the 160GB old drive in its external enclosure, which does both Firewire 800 and Firewire 400.

    Meanwhile, because this stupid piece of... I mean, this lovely new Macbook, has a region-fixed DVD drive, I have to get some kind of cheapo cracked external DVD drive as well. Bleagh.


  • #5
    luckat
    Closed Accounts Posts: 5,366 ✭✭✭luckat


    Oh, and by the way, OWC only give you $2.50 for two 512MB RAM sticks, so I reckon I'll give those away, if anyone wants 'em. Just have to make sure it's ok with OWC first.


  • #6
    WUSBDesign
    Closed Accounts Posts: 549 ✭✭✭WUSBDesign


    I'll personally go with Firewire. This seems to the general opinion.

    Price and usage can skew your options too, so factor this in.


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  • #7
    luckat
    Closed Accounts Posts: 5,366 ✭✭✭luckat


    There's a MacAlly one on OWC that has Firewire 400 (which, confusingly, it calls Firewire 1394A, but apparently that's 400 under another name). So I'll go for that; I'll just put the old SATA drive in it, and work out later what to do about the other drive. Thanks for the help.


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