External HDDs

USB 2.0 and Firewire 400 should have equivalent performance, certainly not noticably different in everyday use. Most external hard drives come with both cables. 119 GBP sounds pretty reasonable for 250 GB.

Norman

quote:

Originally posted by long-time-dead:
Mission : To add an external hard-drive to my iMAC G5.
....
Currently thinking of the FW400 LaCie 250gb external (300703EK) @ £119 from the LaCie shop.

Good choice.

Not the one you are after but it sure looks good.

quote:

Originally posted by Cosmoliu:
USB 2.0 and Firewire 400 should have equivalent performance, certainly not noticably different in everyday use.

Much depends what you call "everyday use". Firewire does a hell of a lot more with its 400mbps than USB 2.0 does with 480mbps. For moving large amounts, it's a lot better. There's a good comarison here.

quote:

Originally posted by Mark Ellis-Jones:
There's a good comarison here.

Thanks Mark. Interesting reading; I've learned my something new for today.

Norman

I have the 250g Lacie Brick.

Its not very fast, I am not sure if its because its USB or because its external. It takes about a minute a gig.

The other problem which I don't believe can be over come is it needs to be unmounted before putting the mac to sleep, or the mac will turn straight back on and tell you off for pulling the plug on it. Most annoying.

If I were to do it again, I would be looking at NAS and there is a product which you can hook your existing external hd up to which then plugs into your wireless network, I might get one of these.

I'm buying one of these for a PC where I do some VERY amateur video editing:
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/ite...828384&sku=TC3J-2066
250GB, 7200 RPM, 8MB, Fierwire, USB 2.0, $99 US (after rebate).
I'm there!
David

Well, just ordered the LaCie FW 250GB as in my first post after getting thoroughly fed up reading about how good it is.

I'm assuming that formatting it using the HFS+ format will be the best for me as it will only be attached to my G5. Any differing views ?

I'll let you know how I get along ......

quote:

Originally posted by long-time-dead:
I'm assuming that formatting it using the HFS+ format will be the best for me as it will only be attached to my G5. Any differing views ?

No differing views from me. It'll probably be pre-formatted, but HFS+ is what I use on mine - and its HFS+ on my three colleagues LaCie disks too (I know 'cos I formatted them all when we got 'em) - you might want to patition it and use Carbon Copy Clone to make up back-up of your system files on your internal disk.

Update time.

Disk arrived today - amazed at the speed of the service. Ordered Wednesday evening and delivered Friday morning.

First impressions are that the unit is very well put together - it feels a quality product.

Connection was simple and as straightforward as a power adaptor and a cable can be.

It arrived preformatted for Windows but formatting in HFS+ was straightforward and I took the opportunity to create 2 partitions.

Transferred all my iTunes files over without a problem and erased them from the Mac.

I'm that impressed with it that I'm tempted to order another .........

garyi

No idea if this is of use but I can put my iMAC to sleep with everything connected and mounted. It's as if the external drive wasn't there.

Maybe it's the USB ? Mine is Firewire.

FWIW - The iMAC manual only makes mention of external HDDs and Firewire.........