Old 05-05-2007, 04:12 PM   #1
Bevosss
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Default Recommend me a (reliable) Firewire Drive

I want to get an external firewire harddrive for my bootcamped iMac, to load my audio files on.

Can anyone here recommend a fast reliable drive, between 320-750 GB?

If there's any particular brand that's overall more reliable, that would be valuable too. Cheers
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Old 05-05-2007, 04:16 PM   #2
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Is this one any good?

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=224

I can get a good deal on it, plus USB2 is handy for my net computer.
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Old 05-05-2007, 08:21 PM   #3
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My son has one of those drives. Works well for him as a backup drive, but he can't record to it directly. His audio interface is also a firewire device, and the two together apparently require too much bandwidth from the firewire interface in his laptop.

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Old 05-06-2007, 01:53 AM   #4
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Quote:
Originally Posted by gregh View Post
On PC's i've had better success with usb2 compared to firewire


on a mac my lacie firewire has been fine

on the PC i've used seagate externals and a range of drives in caddies - you have to be careful to turn them off when not in use or they will die early because of the continual heat exposure - I've learnt this the hard way.

the last one i bought was a mybook 250 for $150 Australian - it seems really good and i'll keep buying them at that price BUT it is also in the category of don't run 24/7 (although having said that it is much cooler than my seagate drives running in cooler master caddies)
Are you recording/playing your audio files to/from the external drive, or just archiving/backup?
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Old 05-06-2007, 07:03 AM   #5
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Can't you hook up an eSATA drive to that iMac? I just got an eSATA HD case, working great here; it's just as fast as regular SATA, way way faster than either Firewire or USB, and won't mess about with your Firewire or USB busses if you need them for something else. Bought a Vantec one, come with eSATA to SATA connector, can't recommend them enough.

Last edited by bullshark; 05-06-2007 at 07:08 AM.
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Old 05-06-2007, 07:28 AM   #6
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Well I would, but I'm pretty sure there's only USB2 and Firewire 400 ...
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Old 05-06-2007, 07:39 AM   #7
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Well, the Vantec Nexstar 3 I got can do both eSATA and USB2 so you could still use it with your iMAC and be able to use eSATA on a regular computer; well built with solid alu case and positive connectors it alows to use any SATA drive of your choosing so I still recommend it.
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Old 05-06-2007, 09:33 AM   #8
Jonas_Eriksson_Swe
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I've got a Lacie 250 gb USB2 (one of those Porsche-designed ones) and it has been quite reliable ever since I dumped the idea of running Linux on one of its partitions. Having an active primary partition on it led to all sorts of (Windows-related, I belive) problems.

However, with that out of the world I've been able to record at least four channels of 44 khz 24 bit audio (haven't tried more) using firewire audio devices (Presonus Firepod and Edirol FA-66), and mixing projects with 20+ channels work fine as well..

Regards,
- Jonas
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