I'm after more storage for my MacBook Pro which currently has 250gb. I'm into photography and film so often run out of disk space so I've been burning DVDs every few weeks but it's becoming a hassle. I was thinking about getting a time capsule but I can't afford it and don't need te wireless capability. I'd prefer a 2tb hard drive with FireWire 800 to make use of my port in my MBP. The only one that I've seen that suits my needs is the Western Digital My Book Studio for $555. Any other suggestions though?
I don't have a router because I mainly use the Internet at uni and Vodafone's mobile broadband on my iPhone.
And come to think of it, you are right, it is quite expensive.
That Taurus Raid II looks appealling. Where did you buy yours from? At the moment the only ones I've seen are on trade me. And some of the auctions say it can only hold upto 2tb (1tb x 2). Is this true?
Sorry for being a newbie but I don't know much about FireWire. I've hear that FireWire 400 is faster than USB 2.0 but I've seen several stats that say USB 2.0 transfers at 480Mbps and FireWire 400 at 400Mbps. Am I looking at the wrong thing?
On paper it looks better. In practise it's not. I was going to write up a long post but instead, I'll be lazy and copy/paste from Wikipedia for an explanation :)
Worth mentioning also. Even if they were the exact same speed you'll often see 20-30% CPU usage (or higher) when saturating USB 2.0 with a file transfer. Firewire will be closer to 5% or lower depending on the controller. In my experience anyway.
"Although high-speed USB 2.0 nominally runs at a higher signaling rate (480 Mbit/s) than FireWire 400, data transfers over S400 FireWire interfaces generally outperform similar transfers over USB 2.0 interfaces. Typical USB PC-hosts rarely exceed sustained transfers of 280 Mbit/s, with 240 Mbit/s being more typical. This is likely due to USB's reliance on the host-processor to manage low-level USB protocol, whereas FireWire delegates the same tasks to the interface hardware (requiring less or no CPU usage). For example, the FireWire host interface supports memory-mapped devices, which allows high-level protocols to run without loading the host CPU with interrupts and buffer-copy operations.[5] Besides throughput, other differences are that it uses simpler bus networking, provides more power over the chain, more reliable data transfer, and uses fewer CPU resources.[26]"
I purchased an external drive (FW400 connectivity) for my iMac from Datasquare (http://www.datasquare.co.nz/index.php/default/external-hard-drives.html) a couple of years ago. I can highly recommend both the drive and the company.
It's still going strong for my time machine backups but I'm now looking at getting one of the 2TB Taurus drives with FW800 as I have a new HD camcorder that is killing my remaining disk space on the iMac.
From what I can see on the specs pages (http://www.macpower.com.tw/products/hddmulti/taurus/) you can go up to 1.5TB per disk - depending on the enclosure.
If you need more TB then you could always look at the Hydra (I was tempted but just bought the Taurus - 2TB), obviously more expensive.
If you want a portable drive, buy a SATA 2.5" harddrive and an enclosure from ascent.co.nz (or other online supplier). I have had success with nexstar drive enclosures, and tend to go with seagate drives although last time it was a WD scorpio.
The nexstar options have usb 2.0 and some have dual usb & firewire. All you then need to do is format that bad boy (disk utility). Don't forget to format it with Fat 32 if you want it readable in Windoze.
(I won't give you a lecture on buying another separate drive for backup).
If you want a portable drive, buy a SATA 2.5" harddrive and an enclosure from ascent.co.nz (or other online supplier). I have had success with nexstar drive enclosures, and tend to go with seagate drives although last time it was a WD scorpio.
The nexstar options have usb 2.0 and some have dual usb & firewire. All you then need to do is format that bad boy (disk utility). Don't forget to format it with Fat 32 if you want it readable in Windoze.
(I won't give you a lecture on buying another separate drive for backup).
I've got two Maxtor One Touch III, one was a 320, the other a 500, but i've upgraded them both to 1tb drives; running daisy chained on FW800. Mainly used with my iMac, but have used them on-location with my MBP also. As far as speed is concerned, they do very well. Handle capturing video fine, and no noticable lag while editing with them as my scratch disc.
I'm pretty sure the One Touch III Turbo has two drives in the enclosure, and supports raid and what not. I've been very pleased with the drives.
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