[proglife]

After years of putting off the purchase, I'm finally ready to order an external hard drive.

Requirements:

- as silent as possible
- Firewire
- 250+GB
- available to order online

Size is not an issue. I'd like to keep it around 100 bucks.

Any suggestions are very much appreciated. Thanks!

 

[Nospam]

Just about any aluminum, fanless enclosure should do just fine.

I haven't tried this one, but it's fairly inexpensive:
http://supermediastore.com/galaxy-me...94-silver.html

Edit:
Obviously, you would have to then supply your own hard drive.

 

[proglife]

thanks NoSpam...

anyone else have personal experience with an external enclosure they like? something you found to be of particular stout quality?

 

[pedxing]

I must put my lousy two cents in.

In general, all of my friends who have bought external drives made by actual drive manufacturers such as Maxtor, Seagate, and WD all failed within two years. We seem to have more success with bare drives purchased separately and mounted into another external closure.

I bought the external closure AMS Venus. They got several types, including regular FireWire. They got good reviews at newegg, but I think its ok because the drive is mounted on a plastic tray which is not good for heat dissipation. The fan moves some air, but I don't think it moves enough air to be effective. The case still gets hot.

I was thinking about buying one of the galaxy metal gear box too. But because I got stuck with a gift certificate that can only be used at a specific vendor with limited selection, I am now eyeing the Apricorn external drive cases which also look promising.

When you get above 200 GB, start reading reviews or complaints. Some external closures have problems with very specific and large drives (ie: Seagate vs WD).

 

[proglife]

I appreciate the input.

Has anyone had any experience with these Fantom drives? MacMall has 250GB drives for 90 bucks after rebate

 

[Ham Sandwich]

I have a Metal Gear Box USB 2.0 and SATA drive. SATA is a nice option. Faster than USB 2.0 or Firewire. When plugged in as a SATA drive it behaves just like an internal SATA drive and is just as fast as my internal SATA drive. There are external enclosure options that have a Firewire and SATA interface but the USB 2.0 and SATA combination is more common.

Advantages of SATA:
The OS can power down the drive just like it can power down internal IDE and SATA drives
Faster transfer

Disadvantages:
Hotplugging may or may not work. Depends on your MB, BIOS, or chipset. If hotplugging doesn't work you'll have to plug in the drive and turn it on before booting so the computer will find it.

Disadvantages of USB or Firewire:
The OS will most likely not be able to power down the drive when it is not in use. That means the drive will be spinning all the time. That may be why some external USB or Firewire drives seem to fail more often.

An odd thing about my enclosure is that the lights will flash when the drive is being accessed when using USB. It doesn't flash when using the SATA interface, instead I have to look at the drive indicator light on the front of the computer just like the internal HD.

 

[dodap]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ham Sandwich I have a SATA is a nice option. Faster than USB 2.0 or Firewire.

True but you must have the appropiate controller either on board (most newer ones have it) or buy an extra card. This prohibits most mini barebones as the are not expandable. Second problem: Windows XP is no friend of Firewire 800. 800 would be roughly as fast as SATA.
I have some USB 2.0/Firewire 400 combo drives but my favourite is a Macpower Pleiades USB 2.0/Firewire 800 combo drive. It is faster and the enclosure is not as rounded as other ones. It can be put standing tall without falling down, even without the typical holding thing, that makes these boxes standing firmly.

 

[Laptopia]

Quote:

Originally Posted by proglife After years of putting off the purchase, I'm finally ready to order an external hard drive. Requirements: - as silent as possible - Firewire - 250+GB - available to order online Size is not an issue. I'd like to keep it around 100 bucks. Any suggestions are very much appreciated. Thanks!

I have several large external HDs, from different manufacturers. All are fairly quiet. They are commodity items, really, but I had two Maxtors fail on me (no data loss, because I make two backups of any data I care about, regularly). And don't get hung up on fire wire. USB 2.0 is fast enough for everything I've done, including video editing.

 

[Nospam]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ham Sandwich I have a Metal Gear Box USB 2.0 and SATA drive...

I have the 5.25" version of this enclosure. While it's fairly inexpensive, I've found it to be far from "sturdy". The top and bottom walls are just too thin and tends to flex quite a bit.

Quote:

...Disadvantages of USB or Firewire: The OS will most likely not be able to power down the drive when it is not in use. That means the drive will be spinning all the time. That may be why some external USB or Firewire drives seem to fail more often...

Don't know about USB, since I only use Firewire for external drives, but I've never had a problem with drives not spinning down. Could be more of a Windows issue, since I've never experienced this problem on any version of the MacOS, as far back as OS 9 up to OS X.

Quote:

Originally Posted by proglife ...Has anyone had any experience with these Fantom drives? MacMall has 250GB drives for 90 bucks after rebate.

This one http://www.macmall.com/macmall/shop/...no~7083077.asp looks a little like my all-time favorite Triumph Venus enclosure. The Venus is the smallest 3.5" enclosure I've seen, with the only downside being that it tends to run a bit warm (the enclosure body acts as a heat sink, but since it's on the smallish side...). Still, I've had it running for several hours at a time (sometimes all day) over the past 3 years, with no problems.

Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find a Firewire version of this enclosure in stock anywhere for quite a while.

This is my 2nd favorite enclosure:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817145160

Mine's a Wiebtech branded one that I've had for something like 4 years. It unfortunately has plastic endcaps like the Triumph Venus, but the case does a great job dissipating heat from the drive. I've been using it with my old Western Digital drive (the old ones run very hot) without any problems.

 

[Nospam]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bob ♫ ...And don't get hung up on fire wire. USB 2.0 is fast enough for everything I've done, including video editing.

True, up to a point.

If you've only got one drive, USB 2.0 is almost as fast as FW400 for real-world usage. However, once you start adding additional drives, USB 2.0 starts to look pretty bad.

Just depends on what you're going to be doing.

Another nice thing about Firewire is that you can actually run some 3.5" drives in a bus-powered enclosure (i.e., no power adapter). I think La Cie sells them, and Wiebetech used to sell some. USB can only provide enough power for 2.5" drives.

If you've got a Mac, Firewire makes more sense for a few reasons:
1) USB 2.0 has tended been slower on a Mac than a PC (Apple has never given much priority to optimize their USB drivers).

2) Most Macs can't boot from USB... only Firewire.

3) Firewire Target Disk Mode... probably one of the most useful, but least widely known features.

 

[proglife]

Firewire is a requirement because I'll be using a G4 450 from 1999 (!!!...yep, still kicking and running Tiger like a champ) for the time being....USB 2.0 wasn't invented yet

Thanks for all the replies! Very helpful

 

[pedxing]

If you are worried about bandwidth, stick with firewire. Firewire is more efficient than USB 2.0, therefore it usually achieves higher transfer rates than USB 2.0. From my experience and from reading reviews at other web sites, I usually see USB 2.0 get transfer rates of somewhere between 16-24 megabytes per second while firewire can something like 28+ megabytes per second. The drive and the USB/firewire chipsets can impact the numbers too. The only real advantage of USB 2.0 is how common it is among contemporary hardware.

 

[Ham Sandwich]

Quote:

Originally Posted by dodap True but you must have the appropiate controller either on board (most newer ones have it) or buy an extra card. This prohibits most mini barebones as the are not expandable. Second problem: Windows XP is no friend of Firewire 800. 800 would be roughly as fast as SATA.

True. It's just that many people don't even realize SATA is an option for an external drive. Just wanted to mention it as an option to consider just in case proglife had a computer with SATA.

 

[dodap]

My transfer rates (with an older PC with an additional Promise IDE bus controller and Samsung SP1614N -160 GB and SP2514N - 250 GB) with a single 2 GB file:

hard disk to hard disk: 26,7 MB/sec

Pleiades with SP2514N drive
hard disk to USB 2.0: 11,3
USB 2.0 to hard disk: 14,3
with Firewire
hard disk to Firewire800: 25
hard disk to Firewire400: 22
Firewire800 to hard disk: 26,3
Firewire400 to hard disk: 22

Raidsonic IcyBox SP2514N drive
hard disk to Firewire400: 16,7
hard disk to USB 2.0: 10

 

[Nospam]

I can just hear people saying:

"But USB 2.0 is 480mbps and Firewire is only 400mbps, so USB must be faster"

I think you'll see sightly higher USB transfer rates on a newer computer. One of the problems with USB 2.0 is that it relies on the CPU, so transfer rates depend greatly on whether or not your computer is doing something else at the same time. Even typing and moving your mouse can slow things down a bit, if they're on the same bus.