Firewire Hard drive for mac

Darkangel

Can anyone recommend a good firewire hard drive for a macbook? I've been told that this one is quite good but it's USB.

I want to get a firewire one because I only have 2 USB ports and generally have other stuff plugged in and never seem to use the firewire port.

Or should I just stick to a USB hard drive because it's more reliable?

HELP!!!! (ta! x)

isofa

The one you link to is a portable "Passport" drive, if you don't need portability the WD MyBooks desktops are excellent drives, various versions come with USB, Firewire etc. Amazon also sell these (search for MyBook for all the versions, essential, premium, studio etc.

Firewire offers a better transfer speed on Macs than USB, the difference is less noticeable on PCs.

Firewire is fast and reliable on the Mac.

Darkangel

Thanks, I'd quite like a portable one just in case I need to go away for work I can take it with me. Is this one a good price do you think? Are there any other websites that you could recommend for getting it cheaper? Thanks

Bob63

Wouldn't buy a WD drive if it were the last one on earth.

On my Macbook Pro I have a 250GB Iomega eGo portable drive with dual FW400 & USB2 interfaces. On the iMac I have a 500GB Lacie D2 Quadra with FW800, FW400, USB2 and eSATA interfaces. I am happy with both.

Mike

toasterman

Just to counteract the above comment, I've used plenty of WD drives over the years and never had a problem with them.

geordie458

As have I.

isofa

As have I, they have in general proved to be the most useful external drives I've owned. The dual interfaces on my MyBook Premium are perfect for my work, I've had it for years, 500Gb cost a fortune when it was introduced, very fast over Firewire, I now rarely use it over USB. I've also owned LaCie.

But you'll find this with all hard drives, many people will have had no trouble and a few will suffer a failure. ALL hard drives will eventually fail at some point either in 3 years or in 30 depending on your luck! (I've only had one HD fail ever, in a Dell laptop, I've got 15 year old Macs with hard drives that still work as new, kept for museum pieces!)

DarkAngel try: www.scan.co.uk/Index.aspx?NT=1-0-19-461-0#PageContent
Important to note that portable ones, based on 2.5" notebook drives will be slower than desktop ones based on faster 3.5" drives.

Other brands to look at are LaCie as cheesy.mike mentions and Freecom