Mini drive for mac

[Paul]

Hi guys,

I have just odered one of these little drives from OWC
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other%20 ... 8U5500SB8/

500Gb in a tiny little case, should be perfect for my 90,000 songs, I am currently dragging about a massive external drive with a big noisey fan, which I plan to retire as a backup for my songs.

I'll report back if anyone is interested.

Paul

[jfbiii]

I just picked up a 250GB Maxtor for the same reason. Except mine's usb only and has some weird double-usb plug to split power and data. Not sure how well it will work for a show if I only use one of them.

[dave]

I always recommend against USB, even USB 2.0, you'll get better performance with FireWire every time.

[Einsteindork]

I agree with Dave on the Firewire. USB was very unreliable for me. It seems like a great deal. I got the USB because I didn't want to have another thing
to have to find a plug for... but, the USB (even the splitter power/data ones)
crapped out on me eventually. I use them as a back-up only. Your miles may
vary but just my two cents.

[HouseOfSound]

i have learned the usb drive blues the hard way. i have to run a terabit drive now and i have blown thru 3 external maxtor drives now. so if anyone has ideas on affordable and stable 1tb firewire i am all ears

[Don22b]

what is the problems with USB drives in performance..?

[jfbiii]

I haven't noticed any performance issues with my USB 2.0 mini drive. Disclaimer: I'm not running a show off of it, I back up to it and I use it to back up my DVD collection. In nearly daily use since Nov. I've had zero problems, even though I only plug in the combined data/power plug.

In theory, Firewire 400 is capable of a better sustained transfer rate, making it better suited for video and audio applications where a lot of data is being traded. In reality, I think you've got to be really pushing the upper limits of either interface to really notice. And then it's probably really only noticeable if you're comparing side by side or if you have a lot of experience with one and switch to the other. There do seem to be more horror stories about USB than Firewire, and I know I had several bad experiences on my agp G4/500 with USB. But I currently use both at work transferring large amounts of data back and forth from multiple-interface external drives on USB, Firewire 400, and Firewire 800 and haven't had issues that I can attribute to the USB interface.

Actual hard-drive mechanism quality is a separate issue.

[dave]