[P1] SOT: Firewire speed and external hard drives?

Richard McKay richard.mckay1 at virgin.net
Mon Jan 13 23:18:00 PST 2003


Alric,

I bought an external FW housing and HD a while ago (sept. 01) that allowed a
quite fast transfer rate for the time, and it worked brilliantly until this
week...something must of happened with the electronics because it has now
fried 2 HD's (original and trouble shooting drive!) on me!

The major thing I can recommend is that you *read* around if they have
managed to deal with the cooling problems in the housings yet (there is
usually very little heat dissipation possibilities because of the wish to
have a small attractive housing (no ventilation, heat sinks or fans) and
this more than anything may limit your speed thoughts or cause premature
death of the drive...I would recommend the largest capacity you want to
afford but with a 5400 rpm drive (fast enough for most stuff and cheaper
anyway) because of the heat issue...unless you are doing video or such that
requires really fast transfers. Besides if you need/want to upgrade later
for size reasons you then have a drive that works in your older machines
standards (bus speeds or other limiting factors) maximizing your cash
outlay.

just my .02

Cheers,

Richard
--

Alric J. Lam wrote the following:

> With all the talk of external firewire drives from time to time on this list,
> I've decided to get an enclosure and a drive and put together my own.  Now the
> question is, would it make a difference if I got a hard drive with say 8mb of
> buffer as opposed to 2mb, or would the bottleneck to getting faster transfer
> rates be my iBook, the ide interface or bridge, or the drive?  Looking at
> dealmac.com, there are deals for either the WD 100gb with 2mb buffer or the
> special edition with 8mb buffer, for only 10 more dollars after rebate.
> 
> As I'm guessing there may not be any exact answer, but I'd like to hear any
> thoughts on this anyway....



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