[Ti] External Firewire drives

[Tarik Bilgin]

My Ti 400 10Mb has been treating me well since I bought it, but disk 
space has become a real issue.

Since I work with computers, I have a number of machines that I use, 
and for some time have wanted to work with portable , quiet and fast 
external drives for storing, working and backing up files.

I saw a while ago that Other World Computing started offering 
"enclosure kits" that allow you to turn any standard IDE drive into a 
Firewire/USB 2 drive.

 From my perspective I think it is important that the drive/enclosure be:

- inexpensive. (I'm not rich -- yet)

- Bus powered

- Oxford 911 FireWire bridge chipset (others are very slow)

- Support for IDE drives larger than 127GB

- Daisy chainable

- USB (pref 2.0)

- Fanless

although I will make compromises on any or all of those factors.

As far as I can see OWC offer a drive that fits the bill, and if I 
lived in the US I would jump at it. Unfortunately the only drive 
enclosures available here in the UK from dealers are the "Wiebetech" 
(spelling?) and "noname" brands (of which I am rather suspicious).

If the OWC _really_ is the best enclosure to go for I will end up 
having the hassle of ordering form the US (problem is Her Majesty's 
Customs not anything to do with export/import logistics)

Also I have noticed external (pre-built) LaCie drives at a hefty 
pricetag. Are these any good?


--
Tarik Bilgin
Opalblue
tarik at opalblue.com