Hi again guys, long time no speak! Anyway a friend of mine is looking for a portable hard drive to use with her future macbook while at Uni doing graphic design. The specs the Uni have told her are: min 300gb, 7200rpm firewire interface (why it has to have a fire interface I dont know). Now I dont know much about macs but Ive found a few that are mac compatible but not found a portable one that is 7200rpm. The closest I have come so far is this http://www.play.com/PC/PCs/4-/57177...l-USB2-0-Firewire-2-5-Hard-Drive/Product.html I eventually discovered this was a 5400rpm drive but it ticks the other boxes. The only other thing that worries me is the compatibily the description list very specific editions of Mac OS X (and not knowing anything about macs im not sure how much an impact this will have). It also says it needs to be reformatted to be windows compatible so im guessing its only compatible with one OS at a time? Can anyone help me with the compatibilty questions? Are there even any 7200 portable drives out there? or do they have to be desktop? Can any mac users recommend good external drives (portable/desktop) that fit the spec? Thanks for your help guys -Fused
OWC has a really good selection of drives. The reason they want firewire is that its wicked fast, and has it's own built in controller, so there very little processor hit while using it. USB2 uses the system cpu, so it slows down your graphics apps. If they are using newer macs try for drives with firewire 800 connectors. http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/on-the-go
Why not just buy a standard 2.5" drive (i.e the 320GB WD Scorpio 'Black/Seagate Momentus 7200.3 (7200rpm), or 500GB Hitachi Travelstar 5K500 (5400rpm), and stick it in an external enclosure with USB 2.0 + eSATA, or USB 2.0/firewire (IDE drives only) connections Using that option, allows you to choose whatever make/model drive you want, and change it out quickly/easily when it fills up
I could go down that route but It wont be me buying this and the person im searching for wouldnt want to do this themselves. Because there not into the technical side of things it is more reassuring for them to buy from a named brand. (Plus I dont want the hassle of fixing/replacing it if the hard drive turns out faulty).
Just an idea but, why not go to the apple store then search for drive your interested in on Google and see where you can get it cheaper? At least you'll know its 100% Apple OK and probably already HFS+ formatted. Forgot to say, I'm buying this one next month (£90 from Apple Direct). Also, I'm a graphics designer and I can tell you opening .PSD files via firewire is ~200% faster than USB2. It's about as fast as a internal drive - you wouldn't think it was unless you knew.
You'll likely have to do that for them anyway will you not, even if you buy a dedicated external drive But I get your point
http://www.lacie.com/uk/products/product.htm?pid=10821 Lacie Rugged Drives. I carry 2x 160Gb with me every where I go. They have a 200Gb -7200rpm. But, tbh, the ones I have are wicked fast and I can daisy chain them. Take a look at the 320Gb drive on FW800 and I think she will be more then happy.
Well she would be paying for it herself, so the warranty would be in her name, im simply suppose to be a more clued up search engine than they are (least I thought I was, it turns out to be more complicated in respect to macs and the stringent specification her uni wants) Thanks for the ideas guy ive come up with a few, I guess price is probably going to play a role, she hasnt bought her macbook yet so im not sure how much she wants to spend.
