I would recommend a Firewire drive with the Oxford Chipset. I have a Western Digital USB only drive and more than a few firewire drives. The WD USB drive always seems to take a lot longer to mount than the FW ones. In your situation with a laptop, I would buy a USB/Firewire combo enclosure and install the hard drive yourself. I like Western Digital and Samsung brands myself. Buy the bare drive from MSY if you live near a store but buy the enclosure from a Mac store like Express Powermac, Frequency or Streetwise as they will guarantee it will be compatable. I think it's important you get the USB option as you may want to connect it to the USB port of the new Airport extreme.

Alternatively i really like the look and feel of Lacie D2 drives although the warranty of the HD will be shorter. Avoid the Lacie porsche model as it overheats.

i have two Lacie d2 triple interface externals and have no complaints. i did have a maxtor III but that went back because after six months it developed an I/O error that didn't really impress me, so I exchanged it for the second Lacie. the 300Gb/320Gb models seems to very well priced at the moment since i think they're trying to phase one of those models out as the lowest capacity for the triple interface.

i've also heard that the porsche design ones aren't as reliable as the d2, but that's anecdotal!!

I have four LaCie triple interface (2TB ones) that cost around $2k each about 2 years ago.
Two days ago one of them died.
I found out that two of the four internal Seagate Barracuda drives died,
and perhaps the RAID card too ($160 from LaCie).
The warranty on individual drives is 5 years, but LaCie only warranty the unit including drives for 12 months - bummer.
Anyway, I went to CentreCom and got two replacement 500Gb internal drives for $168 each!
That is a fantastic price.
It really does pay to shop around, as the first quote from another store was $220 each.

RE: Going overseas...

Certainly need to take that into account, and make sure whatever drive you decide on can handle other power supplies...

I'm borrowing a "Cooler Master" "XCraft" harddrive at the moment which is 320Gb, Firewire & USB2, cost $199 inc postage off eBay... no problems so far.

I too am now on the hunt for a pair of drives. Seeing I am archiving all my music collection collected for the past 40 years. Finding stuff I forgot I had & its reall nice to have all your music in one place iTunes.

But storage & backup is a serious issue. I was considering a pair of the Lacies mentioned above but now you are making me think again.

Cheers Scott

PS. I find CenterCom to have some great price's & plain no frills service is nice too !

As in one of the posts above , buy the USB2/Firewire enclosure and install the hard drive yourself. I would buy a Seagate drive with the 16mb cache and get the five year warranty as opposed to the other brands which mostly come with three years or less. They are much the same price too. Also look to get an enclosure that has a decent fan in to vent as much hot air out as possible.As also mentioned above , if you really need to backup huge data files as fast as you can then the triple interface with USB2/Firewire 400/ Firewire 800 is the way to go although they are not as common as USB2/Firewire 400 and that much more expensive as well.
Stewie

If you plan to travel much, you may want to consider getting two laptop drives and two 2.5" enclosures. This will be a more expensive option but will save the hassle of having to carry extra power supplies and cables - laptop size disks can be powered over Firewire. Should cost around $350-$380 for 2x160gb drives if you shop in the right places.

I've made heaps of drives in the past.. and my advice is DONT cheap out on a external case.. I've had lots of problems with the no name cases with things like the plugs pins breaking and things like that... get a good brand.. worth it in the long run..

good luck!

I am in the process of building a RAID0 with 2x500Gb Western Digital in a NewerTech Guardian case.

I am still waiting for the drives to arrive but the case feels substantial. Case cost around $250 from epowermac.com.au.

I have had one 320Gb Maxtor failed within 1 month and the other one with triple interface still going OK.

Definitely don't skim on the drive case. Life of the drive definitely has something to do with the case... power, ventilation, etc.

To restore from backup and frustration of a failed drive more than outweigh the extra cost of the drive.

After trying a few brands like seagate, lacie and maxtor, I reckon building my own is the best. I get to chose my own drives and case. Works out slightly more expensive but the pre-build drives seem to be more tricky to take apart.

Thanks for your help. Some good advice there.
As far as pre-built one's go, any thoughts on epowermac's 250G, 16M Hardbook versus their Icecube Pleiades Gen II combo 250G 16M? (I know one is portable and the other isn't). They seem like they might be reasonably well equipped at a good price.

The IceCubes are great - I have an original one and its never skipped a beat. The newer ones look much better ventilated too. Dunno 'bout the other one, but you can't go wrong with an icecube B)

The IceCubes are definitely the go, I've never had one fail. Lacie on the other hand....

This thread is now the relevant sticky for this question, as it has better answers to start with.

I agree the Icecubes are great, although I have never used the USB port on my one. The lack of a fan is a huge advantage IMO. A larger size like the 320 or 400Gb might be better value than a 250 Gb though.

I've had a LaCie Porsche P3 250GB Firewire for about a year that cost $285 then and I'm about to buy another 500GB LaCie P3 Firewire from Expansys for $268 delivered.

You should get Firewire and not USB because you can't make a bootable clone on a USB only drive. I've also heard that FW is better at handling audio, something to do with the way USB handles the info in packets.

I am confused about this storage situation - I have a Lacie Porsche external drive for a backup - it does.

I would like to move to a backup/media storage solution for my WiFi network, AppleTV, iMac G5 ( although new iMAc as soon as they are announced) and a few iPods about the place.


I reckon a terrabyte should do? but how? - via an Airport Extreme? or off the iMac?

macheads please advise

tah