[P1] Firewire HD addition for iBooks

[Scott Warren]

There seem to be 2 kinds of external drives, 3.5" or smaller with a 
laptop hard drive inside and the 5.25 with the ide hard drives inside.  
The 3.5 or smaller ones tend to be quiet and low power so a firewire 
port will power them.  They also tend to be more expensive and I think 
they are only up to 80gig at the moment.  (wow, who would say "only 
80gig" 3 years ago?)  The 3.5" lacie drive I have used was nice and 
quiet at 60gigs.

The ide drives are getting cheaper by the hour and with 250gig already 
out, who knows how big they will get.  Lacie makes an external 500gig 
drive for $540 that also includes an ethernet port.  Since these are 
designed for desktops, heat becomes an issue as well as higher rpms 
making more noise, but I doubt its "airplane class" noise.  I have 
found the fans in the external units are louder than the drives and 
even then its still a whisper.

One thing to keep in mind, high RPM and ATA speeds do seem wasted on 
USB or Firewire external cases as the ports do not go as fast as the 
drives can go... might be a way to save money there.


On Mar 23, 2004, at 2:12 PM, Richard McKay wrote:

> Am 23/3/04 12:12 pm schrieb "Alexandre Leroux" unter 
> <alexandre at leroux.net>:
>
>> Does these make a lot of noise? I remember my good old G3 Beige making
>> airplane-class noise, I do not want adding an HD I'll regret!
>>
>> Thanks for any feedback,
>
> Sorry for the first email, too quick on the send button.
>
> One thing to consider is the speed of the drive itself. I would suggest
> considering a 5400 rpm drive instead of a 7200 rpm drive because of the
> noise and heat differences. Some of the earlier FW enclosures were 
> actually
> a problem if you put a 7200 rpm drive in them.
>
> From experience, my subjective opinion is that 5400 drives are quieter 
> than
> the 7200 models.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Richard