Hardware :: Looking For A Good External Firewire HDD?
Dec 27, 2008
I've been on the fence about getting an external hard drive to back up my system via Time Machine and am thinking about finally biting the bullet and getting one.
Here are the specs I'm looking for:
At least 500GB of space (my iMac's internal HDD is 250GB)
Firewire 400 or 800
A manufacturer's warranty of more than 1 year
I've been looking for some time but it seems most external hard drives have gone the way of USB 2.0 (of which I'm using all the USB 2.0 ports on my iMac and don't want to have to bother with a USB hub).
The only one that I have really found to fit my situation is the Seagate FreeAgent Desk for Mac 500GB USB 2.0/Firewire 800. However, that is priced pretty high - I'm looking to spend no more than $100.
I am open to purchasing an internal HDD then putting it in an enclosure but have no knowledge of what I would need to look for.
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Feb 8, 2012
I just got the external harddrive "Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex USB 3.0 1TB" with a Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex Upgrade Kabel FireWire 800. I have neither a USB 3.0, nor a Firewire 800 on my white macbook (2008). I already know, that it's possible to use USB 3.0 with an USB 2.0 port, but I would like to use it with the firewire to spare the USB port for other devices. My question: Is there an adapter or cable to use the Seagate Firewire 800 with my Firewire 400 port? I don't know, where and what to look for.
Info:
MacBook (13-inch Early 2008), Mac OS X (10.6.8)
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Jan 19, 2010
I'm still debating whether I should get a 27" iMac or an external monitor for my Macbook Pro. I would get this external screen : [URL]. Any thoughts on that? It's an IPS screen so colours should be very good. Alternative is an Apple Cinema Display which costs about double but I'm not sure it's worth the price premium over the NEC display.
I love the iMac 27" but all the screen problems really scare me away, since I mainly do photo work on my Macbook Pro which is why I need a good, high res screen.
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Dec 27, 2008
this year santa brought me a brand spankin' new LaCie 500GB external hard drive. It has both USB2 and Firewire ports. Which one should i use? will one be noticeably faster or is there more benefits of using one over the other?
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Sep 12, 2010
Is firewire worth the extra money? For the price of a 1 Tb firewire drive, you can buy a 2 Tb USB drive for the same money.
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Jan 30, 2010
Alright, just bought a 1tb WD my book for 17" macbook pro. didn't look too closely and realized when I got home that it's usb2.0 and not firewire. Is this a problem? Does anyone actually run files (say, music or videos) off their HD (and seamlessly, at that?)? I imagine if I only use it for back up, I'd get away with usb, but if I wanted to do the former?
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Dec 23, 2010
so 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?
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Nov 22, 2009
I am thinking about getting the iomega ego
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Jul 20, 2010
Can anyone recommend a couple of good, reliable external hard drives?
The first one I'm looking for is a desktop USB/ESATA/Firewire drive and the other one I'm looking for is a NAS drive to use as a server disk.
Haven't got much to spend but want reliability over cheapness.
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Jun 11, 2012
I am looking at getting an external hard drive ...but before that, someone suggested i could use the second internal hard drive...but how do i find out if i do?If i don't, can someone recommend a good external hard drive?
Info:
iMac, Mac OS X (10.5.8)
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Mar 8, 2008
Can I boot to an .iso on a firewire drive? I've been having trouble with my disc drive lately, so this is how I'm trying to work around it
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Oct 6, 2010
Anyone have a recommendation? I wish they still sold the Seagate one.
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Jul 10, 2008
I am looking for an eSata, Firewire 800, USB external enclosure that has removable trays for two or more hard drives. Specifically I am trying to find one that has the similar apperance of the Mac Pro, aluminum case and such.
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Mar 19, 2009
I was wondering if firewire is faster then usb for external hard drives. As I mentioned in another post I have a bunch of mac g4s. I want to make use out of but sata cards are very expensive if they're Mac compatible. What I was thinking is that since I can get a firewire sata adapter for $20 if not less it would be about the same cost as a good sata card and would be allot more likely to be compatible. I could just drill a few holes in a pci placeholder so I can run some cables through it to have the drives internal without compromising the case.
If I needed to I could swap the drives in between PC's allot easier then with a sata card. Because it would be far too expensive to get one for each system. My main concern is what the speed of firewire is since I've never used it before. If it's better then usb then it would probably be pretty feasable. I'm not going to be using them for any intensive software but I think it would be nice to have a good r/w speed.
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May 6, 2009
I have some iMacs (running 10.5.6) each with an external direct-connect FireWire hard drive. About every ten minutes, these drives will spin up for a minute or two, then spin down again.
Background: The drives are set as Time Machine backup volumes on their respective iMacs. I assume the frequent accesses I observer are not related to Time Machine (because the accesses are much more frequent than the hourly backup schedule). The drives are not remote-mounted anywhere.
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Jun 10, 2009
With an external HD that has both firewire and usb 2.0, is it possible to use both at the same time? Can you plug firewire into your MBP and USB into another computer or router? Just wondering if there are any downsides to this. I would hate to be sucked into a black hole by plugging in both at the same time!
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Jun 26, 2009
I'm planning on buying an external firewire 2.5 disk, and i am wondering if there is any real difference between firewire 400 and 800 if the disk is 5400 rpm speed. The reason i am asking is i cant find the passport studio with firewire 800 anywhere here where i live, only the firewire 400 version.
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Jul 19, 2009
i am looking to buy a external HD that don't run on AC and use firewire 800. i know LaCie have one, is there any other one that does? hit me up with a link or something or branding and model.
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Sep 17, 2009
I am on Snow Leopard btw. I have a 1 TB external HD that I'm using with Firewire 400 and I've noticed that it seems to slow down my computer. Like for instance I'll boot up my computer and it will take forever for it to start up. Then, as soon as I turn off my drive it boots up immediately. Or I'll use Spotlight and then basically it gets stuck with a spinning beach ball and as soon as I turn off the drive everything is fast again.
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Sep 21, 2009
I need to extend my iMAC HD. I do not think I can open it and upgrade the HD inside. What I am think about is getting a Firewire 800 external HD. Does there a HD so I can connect it to MAC. it will fall sleep or turn off when Mac is power off and when MAC is power on(Firewire has power) then the HD will wake up auto.
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Jul 3, 2010
Running a MacPro with both Leopard and Snow Leopard os drives.I was wondering if it was possible to use CCC to back up my Snow Leopard drive by running CCC when booted in Leopard and vice versa?This way the os drive being backed up will not have processes running when being copied. I will just designate the SL drive to be backed up and point CCC to my external CalDigit eSATA
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Nov 16, 2010
im looking for an external enclosure that provides a firewire option for my macbook pro. The reason i am doing this is because my macbook will randomly eject my usb powered one for no reason. I have been reading that firewire does not have this problem. Im only looking for an enclosure as I replaced my stock 320gb hardrive with a 64gb ssd for my main drive. Preferably something in the 30$ range because im a poor college student . Anybody know of a good enclosure to go with?
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Mar 16, 2009
I was wondering if theres an external similar to the Mypassport that runs firewire 400 or 800?
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Feb 5, 2010
I recently bought a VANTEC NexStar 3 NST-360FBSU-BK. In the exclosure, I have a SATA drive capable of 3.0Gb/second. It's attached to my Late 2009 Mac Mini via FireWire 800. Based upon my understanding and in this situation, the FireWire should be the bottleneck. Therefore, I should be enjoying bandwidth somewhere shy of 800Mb/second. nfortunately, I'm not getting any where near that speed. I can transfer a 726MB file in 18.6 seconds. According to my math, that's ~5808Mb/18.6 seconds = ~312 Mb/second. This is not even FireWire 400 or USB 2.0 speed.For completeness sake, I also just upgraded from 2GB of ram to 4GB (both PC8500) but nothing seems negatively affected (in fact the computer is much, much more snappy!).
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Feb 12, 2010
Ever since I traveled across the pond to Ireland my 2 TB HDD hasn't shown up as a drive. I stuck it in my checked bag and made sure to wrap it in clothes pretty well.
This wasn't an issue until my Macbook Pro's HDD died 2 weeks ago and I lost all my data. The external is where I backed up everything. Is there any software to see if the external HDD is still functional? It spins up and doesn't make any odd noises...
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May 21, 2010
I have a few macs running Tiger and Leopard and do not have a hard drive that is filled to more than 20GB of the capacity. Looking for external hard drive solutions. I have found a couple of very good drives that only have FW 400 and USB 2.0, one in particular is a older model G-Drive 500GB for $50 that is supposed to be quite reliable. These drives are being blown out due to newer ones have esata and fw 800. Would I see a difference in speed cloning or backing up to a a fw 400 drive even if I get a newer mac that only has fw 800 ports and I use a 400-800 adaptor? The better drives are faster 7200 RM vs the slower 5400 drives, mostly portable that I have been looking at. I have been reading posts that for applications such as mine I would not see a difference. For the most part I use the computers for office related tasks including Word, Excel etc with not much else, although I have some different utility programs. I just want a bootable drive should my hard drive fail. I use Carbon Copy Cloner to clone my drives. My main comp has two drives where the primary is cloned to a secondary, but want a external that I can easily plug into a new mac and clone the hard drive in that Mac to my external drive!
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Sep 28, 2007
I've been using my external burner for sometime now connecting to my G4 with the firewire. When I connected recently by firewire the computer does recognize or mount on the desktop like usual. When I tried the USB connection the burner is recognized and mounts fine. I repaired premissions and repaired the disk from the install disk I also reset the Pram
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Oct 15, 2008
when i restart and hold down 'T'...a firewire symbol shows on the screen.. my external HD only uses this USB cord/connection
i'm using a new MacBook Pro.
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Apr 24, 2008
After one of the security updates to OSX 10.3 my OWC Neptune firewire external harddrive quit showing up on the desktop and I can't find a way to access it.
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Sep 9, 2008
I am having trouble saving anything to my external firewire hard drive. This started a few weeks ago. I am able to retrieve use but not modify any file on the drive. I have tried changing permissions but no luck.
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