[P1] External hard Drive

[Dan Farley]

> After years of backing up to CD's, I'm tired of the "drag 'em off the shelf,
> erase 'em (I use CD-RW's), gather all the stuff I want to update (using
> Backup), then sit there reburning 7 CD's of data and 1 or 2 from iPhoto.
> 
> I guess it's time to break down and buy an external hard drive. Someone I
> respect suggested a 120 gig model from Transinternational. She's been using
> it about a month, likes it a lot and pointed me here:
> 
> http://www.transintl.com/store/category.cfm?Category=405&CFID=758110&CFTOKEN
> =91612470&RequestTimeOut=500
> 
> It'll run me between $185 and $199 according to the site.
> 
> So I have two questions:
> 
> First, anybody got a better suggestion?

I think the external harddrive is the ticket for fast backup - I keep an 80
GB that backs up two 40GB Ibooks

TranInt is a reputable company I've always had good service from. I think
you can do better price wise by building your own. You can get an external
case for $25-$40 and a HD for $80 to $100. If your needs aren't immediate
follow the action on www.dealmac.com in the storage section and buy on the
good deals that come up there regularly. They recently had triumph firewire
case for $34 and a 120 GB maxtor drive for $60.

<http://dealmac.com/sections/storage.html>

As for the various RPMs and Buffer - if you are using this as a backup
device and not for video editing - IMHO - they aren't relevant. Ideally
though you want your external case to come with the "oxford" firewire
chipset which seems to be the benchmark in speed.

Dan