To get my Multimedia-Data off my MBP i5 SSD I am looking for a small, 1 2,5" hdd enclosure that is FW-800 powered. I was unable to find anything in the forums nor in the buyers guide about this. Any recommendations or tests?
I am looking for something well designed if possible (imho like the LaCie Little Big Disk Quadra, which has two hds (double the power comsumption) and is too big).
Looking for 2.5" HD enclosures with FW800 ports that are verified to spin and mount via bus power.
View 6 Replies View RelatedI got an Intel x25 160GB SSD and I use a Firewire case to carry my old 500GB 2.5 HD. Now the question is, where should I put my Bootcamp for better use. You know, I am afraid, if I put bootcamp in the SSD as well, the SSD will got heavy load.
View 3 Replies View RelatedAnyone care to advise?
Would love to hear any past experiences and direct comparisons etc
Have written off the Momentus XT due to endless reviews of noise, heat and battery zapping. Is this just the way all 7200 internals are likely to perform though?
If so, should I maybe continue using my 5400 internal for apps and os, and buy a FW800 7200rpm for my media?
Oh, I'm using my MBP mainly for video editing (FCP, Motion, Shake) and some audio and graphics too.
I have been using a MBP for a few months now and I am making a total conversion from PC user to Mac user in January when I buy a nice new 24" iMac but to go with it, I want to buy a couple of new external hard drives. I have currently got a Seagate FreeAgent 500GB USB Drive which is Windows Formatted and I will be keeping that to use with my work laptop (a Dell), and I have been really pleased with its reliability. Anyway, I have been looking around and there are some fab drives on the market but I have a couple of questions. If I get an iMac with a 500GB Internal Hard Drive, how big an External hard drive will I need to use Time Machine without having to delete backups all the time?
Also, I have been primarily looking at the new Seagate FreeAgent drives and the do a PC version (USB) and a Mac version (USB/FW400/FW800), but the 640GB USB version costs �76 whereas the 500GB FW version costs �100. Would you go for the bigger size or the added benefits of FW800? Will I notice much speed difference between USB and FW800?
I can't find any conclusive info on this, can anyone shed any light?
I basically thinking of using my external as my main drive instead of the bundled Mac Mini hard drive.
Has anyone here have any success using an external USB drive (2.5 or 1.8 small drives) thru a hub with the Air?
I know I could use a powered hub but I hate taking and messing about with additional power supplies when I travel.
does anyone know of a specific model HD that works with out needing to connect directly to the one USB port but thru the hub?
Could anyone recommend an external (FireWire 800) Hard Drive that they're using without issues with a Power Mac G5 (mine is a Dual Processor 2.3)?? I bought a couple of WD My Book Studio Edition but have no end of problems on FW800, and looking around here so is everyone else. LaCies seem to have similar problems, plus my own experiences in selling these and seeing FW ports falling off the enclosure's board, etc., puts me off them. Maxtors seem to have different issues and the new brown and orange Seagates are too fugly to even consider. So, anyone recommend a solution (250-500GB) that works fine with FW800 on a dual PMG5??
View 9 Replies View Relatedso I am in search of a new 500GB-1TB External Drive for Time Machine, and it has to have FW800 as well as USB 2.
I was thinking of getting an external chassis and buying my own hard drive, has anyone purchased a good external chassis with both ports, or a all in one drive that is worth the money?
1. Can I connect an external HD to both my AEBS (via usb) and my Mac Mini via FW800?
2. If I can't do the below - lets say I connect my external HD to my Mac Mini via FW800 - with the drive be accessible on the network if my Mac Mini is sleeping?
I'm just trying to figure out what is the most efficient/produce the best speed - way to connect an external HD to my network.
First I wanted to upgrade my new mac mini with a Momentus XT but now I'm thinking about getting a "real" ssd + a FW800 drive for storage to have the huge speed boost of the ssd drive. Does anybody have this combination in his mini? What I want to know: How is the performance like of the external drive connected to FW800? Is it comparable to a standard internal hard drive?
View 11 Replies View RelatedMy new 27" i7 is supposed to be delivered next week, got the SATA cables for installing my own SSD, but am a bit doubtful as to where placing my Scratch space. So, I will end up with an iMac with two internal drives (SSD + HDD).OS, System Library and Applications go to the internal SSD (120GB).
As I will be using FCS (besides CS package and other smaller programms) I would like to set up a dedicated Scratch drive for it.
Which of the following options would you go for, and why?:
1: install scratch space on the internal HDD together with all the other data (pics, music, videos - space is not the issue with a 2TB drive). Would a partition be advisable in this case, since I heard that partitioning slows a disc down considerably.
2: install scratch space on the internal HDD (scratch only), and all other files (pics/music/video) on an external FW800 HDD.
3: install scratch space on the external FW800 HDD (all other files on the internal HDD like usual).
4: use an external RAID backup as scratch space as well (something like the Drobo) with a FW800 connection.
I was looking for feedback on using the Drobo not only as a backup, but also as a scratch - some people found it great working, others not so much...I'd like to find out, if that has to do with the FW800 bottleneck, or if a Drobo scratch is even slower than an external FW800 HDD would be. I know that eSata would be faster, but that is currently out of reach (besides the OWC mod.).
What is the best portable HD that can be powered from the MBA's USB hub without a power cable.
View 16 Replies View RelatedCan anyone recomend some? Something fast and AC powered.
View 4 Replies View RelatedI think I have found a bug in Finder where I cannot copy large files from a bus powered USB external. I get this error:
"The Finder cannot complete the operation because some data in "..." could not be read or written (Error code -36)"
I think I have eliminated hardware as an issue:
1. The problem is repeatable (and always happens) on my Intel Macbook Pro, Intel Mac Mini and G4 Mac Mini
2. The problem happens whether I have formatted the external as HFS+ or NTFS (I can't use FAT32 for files over 4GB, e.g. VMWare disk images)
3. I can copy the files off the external with my Windows Vista machine (mostly dormant these days) and an XP laptop (I use for work), using Explorer.
4. The same problem happens with two different external enclosures (An Xtatix Portadrive and a Beyond Micro mobile Disk). I have also tried 3 different 2.5" drives in these enclosures.
5. If I boot my Macbook Pro into Vista using Bootcamp, I CAN successfully copy the files using Explorer.
6. I CAN also copy the files OK if I use Terminal and the 'cp' command (it works for all 3 machines)
7. I have NO problems with large files and Finder if I use a powered external with 3.5" drives via USB or Firewire (HFS+ or NTFS) on any of the Macs.
As you see, I think I've been pretty thorough. It seems as though Finder must be at fault when used with a bus powered USB external.
I should also mention that all 3 of my Macs are on Leopard 10.5.3, though I did also boot a my Intel Mac Mini into Tiger with the same result (Finder failed, 'cp' worked).
I have reported the problem to Apple, but wondered if anyone else has had a similar issue...and hey, a solution would be a great bonus!
I have a 2009 Mac Mini connected to a 22" LG monitor via Mini-DVI port and it's also connected to a 50" Pioneer Plasma (in the next room) via Mini-Displayport. Everything works perfect except that when I turn off the Pioneer Plasma, my mouse can still scroll over from the LG monitor to the Plasma.
I've also noticed that my screensaver is laggy even when the Plasma is turned off (usually that happens when it's drawing the screensaver on both screens) so it must still be sending a video signal out of the Mini Displayport.
This is in regards to the 2010 mini. I have been reading up on SSD, Hybrids and FW800 with a 7200. What is the easiest AND most effective/cost effective solution? If I went he FW800 route, can I use the same drive as my data storage drive? Will there be enough headroom to run the OS over FW and use the drive to stream movies playing in another room on Apple TV2 simultaneously? Will this give me a performance increase over the internal 5400 if I use the external 7200 for everything over FW800?
That is where my thoughts about the hybrid come into play. I know I can stream the iTunes content over USB2, which I have at the moment for the big drive. I would need to go buy an enclosure with FW800 to run it as a boot drive. I could use that same money and go get a 500GB Hybrid drive and install myself and leave the USB2 as data only. If the install is painless but tedious, I might just do that. If the FW800 route would be robust enough to run the OS and stream data to other devices simultaneously (ie use it as I would the regular internal drive), I might just do that and wait for SSD prices to come tumbling down and do a bigger internal SSD in the future.
I recently picked up a couple of external drives, and decided to benchmark them to determine whether the interface and/or drive type made much of a difference. For those that don't want to read the details, here's the bottom line: If you're going to splurge on a FW800 interface, it's well worth fitting this with a 7200 rpm drive to maximize performance. Uncached sequential writes over FW800 were twice as fast on the 7200 rpm drive compared to the 5400 rpm. FW800 is a marked improvement over USB 2.0 as well. Full results are below. For background, when shopping for drives, I was interested in using the FW800 interface on the MBPs, for the simple reason it's rated almost twice as fast as USB 2.0. Some of the drives I was shopping for included 7200 rpm drives. My first thought was this was silly, since the interface limited the throughput to far-below the limits a 5400 rpm drive could produce, so why bother upgrading to 7200 rpm? Well, it turns out it does make a difference. I've got both a FW800 enclosure (G Drive Mini) and a USB 2.0 interface (Nexstar TX) as well as a 320GB 7200 rpm drive (Hitachi) and a 640GB 5400 rpm drive (Western Digital). So, I benchmarked both drives using both interfaces. Some interesting results! Turns out, the 7200 rpm drive does in fact dramatically improve performance in the FW800 interface. For sequential operations, Firewire has a dramatic improvement over USB 2.0; for random read/writes, drive speed seems to be a more important factor. And for large files, the combination of Firewire and 7200 rpm gives a pretty impressive throughput of almost 75MB/s. Full results are below. Note that the drive and interface are noted in the title bar for each drive.
View 18 Replies View RelatedI wasn't sure if it wouls be a bad idea if I wiped the interal hard drive while I'm booting from a recovery disk, then made a RAID 0 with the internal drive and my FW800 external drive. I'm nearing my max for the internal drive. I have a second FW400 drive backing up with Time Machine. I was hoping to just wipe, make the raid volume, and then restore from the Time Machine backup.
I guess even before that, my FW800 is not working in Lion. I reformatted while connected by USB, reset power management, and reset PRAM, but the firewire bus panics and takes out the Time Machine on FW400 as well. Is there a fix for this somewhere that I'm missing? I bought the FW800 drive for the above reason, only to run into a wall trying to make it work. I really don't want to do a RAID 0 with a USB connection.
I'm not going to try setting up the RAID 0 until I get the FW800 drive working reliably, but I was hoping to kill two birds with one stone.
Info:
iMac (24-inch Early 2008), Mac OS X (10.7.4)
I'm looking for a way to connect an external bus-powered Firewire 800 hard drive (Glyph Portagig 800) to an iMac which only has Firewire 400 ports, and still powering the drive through just the Firewire connector.
All I've found are Firewire 400 to 800 adapters, allowing Firewire 400 peripherals to be connected to computers having only Firewire 800 ports. I need the opposite of course.
Where can I get such adapters, and without sacrificing bus-power?
I was thinking that if i bought an external MOBILE hard drive (un-powered) i could take it with me sometimes when i need it in UNI (in Lectures where there is no power source to plug drive in), but also attach it to the mac and since it is un-powered and mobile time machine will work without needing external power.
View 2 Replies View RelatedI just bought a 640gig Samsung 2.5 inch / 5400rpm drive and threw it in a FW800 case from Other world computing. Running some test using the QuickBench 4 and AJA system test shows me that this little bugger is almost as quick as my internal drive on my MacBook Pro (Model number: WDC WD6400BEVT-00A0RT0). How can this be???? I did a varity of test with different file sizes and the Samsung get 70 MB/s vs about 84 MB/s for the internal drive.
My internal drive is pretty full vs this external drive that is currently empty. I do a lot of video work / large gigabyte files on the drive so perhaps I have a defrag problem? I really expected my internal drive to blow the FW800 connected Samsung out the water?
As I am looking around at all the usb 2.5" drives I have laying around, I was wondering if there is a limit to the number of bus powered drives that the Mac Mini could run at one time.
I have never run more than one self powered drive on a computer before - so I was wondering if there was a limit that the Firewire/USB bus power can support.
Ideally I would love to be able to run one bus powered firewire 800 drive, and three usb bus powered drives - I'm just not sure if that is possible or advisable...
I've take home an unused, unloved Power Mac G4 FW800 from work and would love to hear any anyone may have to get it running @ its optimum without forking out for a new Processor. I wont be doing any gaming on it, plan using it for Media and Design like Final Cut Express4, Photoshop and Illustator and for music and movies.
Its has a Dual 1.25Ghz Processor, 167Mhz Bus, ive installed a new ATI 9600PRO Graphic Card and bumped the RAM up to its 2GB max and have an external 500GB 7200RPM Iomega FireWire HDD. I also got a Philips 19in Wide LCD 1440x900 for cheap.
Has anyone had any luck with not using an Internal Hard Drive and using either a Drobo or external drive to run OSX? I was thinking of getting a new HD that runs FW800 or using my Drobo to creat a partition to load Mac OSX on and run the OS from an external HD.
The Reason I am even trying this, is because the Mini uses Laptop drives with less specs then my External Seagate 500GB 7200RPM with 16 MB of Cache, also 3.5" drives seem to run quicker then even the fastest 2.5" drives.
I don't want to waste hard drive space on my MBP's hard drive on games. I have a 16GB SSD ExpressCard as well as a FW800 external hard drive.
Which would be optimum for playing games off of (considering that a game will need a fairly high read/write speed to keep up)?
If the FW800 drive is better, how much better? Would I notice a difference if I used the ExpressCard instead?
I'm looking for a mass storage option and I've got about $150 USD to spend on it... I really want to get FW800 for the speed. Anyone have a good drive to recommend? The highest I can find is a 500gb for 139.... that's just not good enough.
View 10 Replies View RelatedI want to build Mac Mini media server connected to drobo s. I am wondering if I use the spyderhub (esata to fw800) will fw800 be fast enough to play 3d blu ray with an external blu ray player? The hub lets you connect esata to it and then use fw800 to connect to mac mini. This follows limitation of fw800 speeds though so will this bottleneck? Need to mention I am going to use bootcamp to boot windows 7 and play the 3d blu ray dvd's in windows.
View 2 Replies View RelatedAre they running at full speed or do they default down to FW400 when in Windows?
View 3 Replies View RelatedI have Western Digital Studio II (2x1TB, configured as 2TB). As I don't feel secure and wanted to make a backup of this HDD, I bought an identical HDD for backup.
Questions:
1) If I were to get a chance to start over, can I configure these two drives as a RAID cluster, so that whatever written on 1st disk, automatically mirrored to 2nd disk? Bear in mind, I'm using FW800 for both HDD in daisy-chained setup.
2) How reliable is RAID mirroring (software in leopard) using FW800 external drives, as it may subject to different 'connection/attachment' time to my iMac. Internal drives always on at the same time.
3) I tried to use CCC to clone the disk, the sustained speed is disappointingly at 30MB/sec read and write. If I did a copy from my internal HDD to external disk, I get easily 50-60 MB/sec.
