SOT: Firewire speed and external hard drives?

[Alric J. Lam]

Hi all,

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....

Thanks!

Al