[HM] External drive types

[Brett Forrester]

Dear Jane,

I'm going through some e-mail digests I've missed, so perhaps you've 
already made your decisions, but still here are few more pieces of 
information to consider:

1. LaCie makes external drives with FireWire-only, USB-only, and dual 
FireWire and USB ports.

2. USB ports come in two speeds, USB 1.1 and USB 2.0 (high speed), 
but both ports look the same.

3. FireWire ports also come in two speeds, FireWire 400 and FireWire 
800, but both ports look different.

4. FireWire 400 ports come standard on all Macs, but so far FireWire 
800 only arrives with PowerMacs (towers).

5. All Macs also arrive with USB ports, but only recently have the 
high speed variety (USB 2.0) ports been included. This means that 
older Macs have only USB 1.1 ports, which is fine for mice and flash 
drives, but sluggish for movements to an external hard drive. Which 
kind of USB ports does your Mac have?

6. USB 2.0 is generally equivalent in terms of speed to FireWire 400.

7. Most PCs don't yet come with FireWire ports, but both USB ports are common.

So what sort of ports does your Mac have? Will you want to connect 
this external drive to PCs also? My older iBook only has the older 
USB ports (which really are slow for hard drive connections), so when 
I shopped for an external drive, I wanted it to include FireWire 400 
ports. Also, as I have no need to share my external drive with any 
PCs, I found that LaCie offered FireWire-only versions of the drives 
I was investigating at a lower cost than the dual port type, so I 
bought direct from LaCie and have been very pleased. Also, you could 
do worse than check out LaCie's sale page.

I hope these reminders help.

Brett

>I have been looking to buy a LaCie External drive. I have been watching ebay
>and noticed that there are 2 types of drives, USB and Firewire.
>
>Is there are a great deal of differences in the drives? I see that the USB
>drives are cheaper.
>
>Comments and opinions, please.
>
>Jane

-- 
bforrester at macconnect.com