External HDD's

[Chewy509]

Hi Guys,

I'm in the mood to purchase an external HDD, for when I'm at LAN's. Reasons are twofold,

1, I'm now using a laptop for gaming, so HDD space is limited. (I can't be bothered carting around my main PC to a LAN anymore).
2, I can just share drive around and have it connect locally to peoples PC's... Rather than have them leech direct off the main box via the LAN. All data on the drive will be considered public.

Now, the only real requirement is 320GB+ and Firewire.

I've looked at buying a SATA enclose and drive separately, but the way prices have been lately, price is on par with the external drives offered by Seagate, Maxtor, WDC, etc. (AU$300 for 500GB drive+Vantec enclosure, or AU$310 for a 500GB Maxtor Ontouch III Combo).

I've used the Maxtor Onetouch's at work (just the USB only model), and have been happy with them. I've also looked at the Lacie, Seagate, WDC units, as well... They all seem, well, the same.

The question is, is there any one that stands out as being particularly bad, eg high rates of failure, poor/crap firewire chipset, etc? I know overall each drive manufacturer has roughly the same failure rate, so the physical drive I'm not worried about, it's more about the enclosure and related components...

It'll be used with FreeBSD 6.1+ and Windows XP only...

TIA.

 

[P5-133XL]

I'd choose an external USB 2.0 rather than firewire. The reason is that almost all PC's have USB 2.0 now but only a minority actually have firewire and it is virtually non-existant on lower-end machines.

 

[Chewy509]

I'd choose an external USB 2.0 rather than firewire. The reason is that almost all PC's have USB 2.0 now but only a minority actually have firewire and it is virtually non-existant on lower-end machines.

All the current enclosures I've seen with firewire, also have USB 2.0, so that's not a problem...

The firewire requirement seems from not having USB2.0 on my main PC.

 

[timwhit]

I'm sure you thought about this. But, why not pick an enclosure and then put your favorite brand/model hard drive in it?

 

[Chewy509]

I'm sure you thought about this. But, why not pick an enclosure and then put your favorite brand/model hard drive in it?

I have, and as mentioned price difference is about AU$10-$20 in favour of an enclosure + drive purchased separately...

So either way is open to suggestion, (If someone knows a really good enclosure that's worth getting)?

It's more of a case, of what brands to avoid, rather than what's the "best" out there.

 

[Chewy509]

Ended up getting a MacPower Icecube Pleiades Gen 2 USB2/FW400 enclosure + Seagate 7200.10 500GB for AU$310.

Currently working well. The enclosure is using the Oxford 911+ chipset, which has a pretty good rep.