Any volunteers to write up an external HD article?

Ooo! Choose me - Mr A

Has anyone used a Pleiades Icecube Generation II LAN samba share with leopard yet?

Hey Clockwork

I've got one of those Lacie D2's and its a 150Gb.

Can I open up that tin can and swap it to a 500Gb?

What's the experience here?

I would if someone would give me some drives to test.....

Quick question:

Is the actual hard drive in the Western Digital MyBook Premium 500GB External HD of the Caviar variety?

I'm tossing up between one of these for $239 (at Officeworks) or a separate drive and enclosure. (I can buy a Western Digital Caviar 500GB HD for $134.95 across the road from Officeworks.)

A summary of this thread with the main points would be fantastic.

Since no one else is answering- I'd say yes. I replaced the optical drive in a D2 DVD burner enclosure. They seem be rather similar to the D2 hard drive enclosures- the height and width are the same, but longer. It was easy with just a few screws and only took about 10 minutes with my crappy RSI hands. The 128Gb size limitation on older drives should not bother you as you already had a 150Gb in there.

Evidently the WD My Books are rather difficult to change the HDs in.

Thanks Clockwork and vic.

I ended up undoing those few screws and replacing the 160 Gb Maxtor that was inside the Lacie with a Seagate 500Gb.

There is a screw under one of the stickers that says it will void the warrantee but I guess that time has gone.

Quite easy to change over in the end. And still works.

Now to find the screws.

First time post, using a 750GB MyBook.

It is firewire 800 (800Mbits/sec) so a lot faster than USB (480Mbits/sec).

It powers down with the computer automatically and has a special data flush feature to ensure there is no data loss. So even if you hang something and have to power out of it the data is protected.

Heat is not much of a problem with a clever cabinet design that sucks in air from the bottom to the top. I am not a fan of closed cabinets that rely totally on a forced fan to blow out the heat. Fan bearings don't last that well. There is a fan but it's quieter because it doesn't work as hard.

The warranty is five and without issues because it was all made by the one company. The single local distributor, Westan, I find easy to deal with.

Power is external, so that reduces heat also; which our big enemy. External power also means if you crash your computer the drive doesn't lose data because it lost power.

I think it's a good piece of engineering and will buy more of these.

I think I might get this as a portable back up, I am still intending to get around to an icecube for the time machine drive

Elements™ External Hard Drive 320GB
$ 149.-*





External HDD, USB interface
High speed USB 2.0 for maximum performance, backward compatible with USB 1.1 ports
Plug and play storage - simply plug HDD into a PC or notebook computer for instant high speed data storage
Compact and durable metal case for extra data protection
Supports Mac OS x 10.3 and Windows 2000/XP/Vista

I wonder how good this really is when lacie porche drives are only 30 bucks more than this one now?

No "recommendations", but I wrote this on helping figure out your needs when looking at EHDDs...

http://mactalk.com.au/forums/showthread.php?t=39939

I would like to know anyone who picks these up what they are like, as I need a small portable drive when I am away with my macbook pro, so this might suit the need if its any good.

The price of hard drive mechanisms has dropped so much in the last 12 months, it's scary. Our budget-minded Asian buddies at MSY (Caution: world's crappiest website) have, as an example, Western Digital Caviar 8MB IDE 320GB (the really really good ones) for A$95 at the moment.

Where you have to be careful with external drives these days is not so much with the HD mech, but the case, and cheap cases are to be avoided at all costs, especially with 10.5 -- the most commonly used chipset in budget USB-only drive enclosures is the Prolific chipset, and if you have a skim through these forums wou'll find a lot of whining about how bad these really are. Refusing to mount, refusing to unmount, refusing to format, unmounting by themselves, and loss of data are some of the problems reported with Prolific-based boxes.

Me, I would never buy a LaCie or Western Digital MyBook - they might use very good drives, but their internal electronics are very sub-standard. That 'Elements' case above is a new release from Western Digital, and despite ten minutes of precision google-fu i cannot determine its chipset ... but being USB-only means it can be either Initio (good), NEC (good) or Prolific (very very bad). I'd have to get one and open it up to find out ... but I'd never do that because I won't buy a hard drive that didn't talk FireWire.

I tell everyone the same thing -- get an external that uses the Oxford chipset, because that's the standard chip that Apple use and code for. Buying a cheap USB-based external means you have a 4 in 5 chance of it being Prolific-based.

"But an Oxford-based box alone costs $70 or more, I can get a USB one for $25!" To which I reply, "Cheapskates always pay twice." It is better to pay that bit extra for something that is reliable and problem-free.

My recommended drive enclosures are:
- MacPower IceCube2
- Newmotion Odyssey
- Vantec Nextar
- Sandisk Hardbox
- Newer Technology MicroStak


Brains