Best Value in Firewire External Drives

[jim kitchen]

Dear Frank,

I mentioned this supplier in another thread...

http://www.macgurus.com/productpages...iveFWFixed.php

They happen to sell the Burly drive enclosures, just like a few other suppliers. They are well made, almost military grade, where you can supply your own HDs as required. I have used these hard drive enclosures for the past five years without issue.

Just a thought.

jim k

[Ed Richards]

Does it need to be Firewire - ESATA is fast and cheaper. If you have ports on the motherboard, for $15 you can get an adapter that will bring two ports to outside of the box, then you can use a Thermaltake BlacX eSATA USB Docking Station. Plug in a naked drive and away you go.

[Kirk Gittings]

Does it need to be Firewire - ESATA is fast and cheaper. If you have ports on the motherboard, for $15 you can get an adapter that will bring two ports to outside of the box,

This is what I do too.

[Rick Moore]

I have had very good luck with Seagate FreeAgent external Firewire 800 drives. Cheap and reliable.

[Jay W]

Does it need to be Firewire - ESATA is fast and cheaper. If you have ports on the motherboard, for $15 you can get an adapter that will bring two ports to outside of the box, then you can use a Thermaltake BlacX eSATA USB Docking Station. Plug in a naked drive and away you go.

This is cool! My computer didn't have an open drive, but the case had screws so I could mount a drive right to the case. The drive made the case hum (from spinning), so I used some fabric as washers and it's quiet now. It's not a raid setup, but I manually "RAID" with the new 2 TB sata (internal) and 1 TB external firewire.

Jay

[Rider]

This is what I do too.

Did you run into limitations on cable length or anything else because you're extending SATA to eSATA?

[Rider]

It sounded like Frank was looking for something simple, reliable and cheap.

Not having too much time to research or build, it seems to me that the WD external FW drives are a safe bet (possibly get the 4-port version that includes eSATA). Anyone have a different suggestion than that?

[Robert Oliver]

you can usually find deals on dealmac... some expire before I get to them, but I have saved some cash on these.

http://dealmac.com/categories/Comput...Drives/56.html

[Stephen Lewis]

Hi Frank

One word; Drobo. http://www.drobo.com/

[JohnnyV]

Best bang for the buck:

Macally G-S350SUA Hi-Speed eSATA/FireWire/USB2.0 Storage Enclosure for 3.5-Inch SATA HDD

HITACHI 0A38016 1TB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive

I have three of the above HITACHI drives been running 24/7 for 6 months... still going strong.