[X4U] Re: Duplicating?

[Jon Warms]

Linda and others-

Thank you for your links and info on the USB - Firewire comparisons. And
the OWC link has a $33 Firewire ATA/IDE enclosure. Good find, thanks  
again.

The original poster needed an external HDD to replace the internal one;
since performance would be critical for him, Firewire seems to be
the way to go.

Maybe I didn't express my needs clearly.

I'm retired, and my retirement funds (much in Apple stock) haven't done
that well this year. I have an extra ATA hard drive, and I looked for  
the
cheapest enclosure I could find. What I need is extra online storage for
my music and photos (8 grandkids); as said, I'm retired and speed is  
less
important.

I think many people just need more online storage. For most of them,
the speed difference is immaterial. Other considerations - cost and com-
patibility mainly - are more important, and that may mean USB or it
might mean FW.

Not to prolong the thread, but some uses run in the background, and
drive speed is less important. For example, while an initial backup may
take all night, what difference does it make if a regular incremental
backup takes a few minutes longer?

(I find USB has a few advantages over FW. FW drives have
had reliability problems, apparently history but ... . Some USB drives
can be powered from the USB port, which is handy for laptops. And
the cable is often more flexible than FW cable ;-).)

On Dec 19, 2008, Linda <xpressobean at mac.com> wrote:

> If you head over to the mac os x support Yahoo group, there are guys  
> (who
> know what they are doing) who have measured all of the interfaces,  
> and find
> USB to be the slowest, no matter the published specs.
>
> Just my 2¢,
> Linda