Choosing between these hard drives

S

sepandee

New Member
I have a macbook 2.0Ghz, 120GB HDD, 2GB RAM, OS X 10.4. Need more space, and I'm trying to decide between:

Seagate FreeAgent Pro ST303204FPA1E3-RK 320GB 7200 RPM USB 2.0 / IEEE 1394a / eSATA External Hard Drive This is selling for $100 at Fry's.

Western Digital My Book Premium WDG1C3200N 320GB 7200 RPM USB 2.0 / IEEE 1394a

Both are 320GB and have IEEE 1394a (Firewire 400).
Which do you think is better?

'm also open to other options. I've noticed that by wanting a firewire, I've dismissed A LOT OF HDs out there that have excellent reviews. Maybe firewire isn't that important and USB 2.0 can do the job, huh?
 
If it was me i would personally go with the cheaper one, seagate are known to be fairly good make of HDDs, but i know that the WD My Book is really popular and they are supposed to be good external HDDs. Any way I would get the seagate from Frys.
 
Yeah the WD My Books have really good reviews, especially the basic ones WITHOUT Firewire. Actually, for some reason beyond my understanding, the USB-only externals have much better reviews than the ones with firewire. Makes me wonder whether I should just forget about using a firewire.
 
I would go with the WD My Book and use Firewire, a little quicker. And the reason most ppl don't buy Firewire, is b/c they don't know what it is.... USB is just more popular...
 
Firewire is faster than usb, but if you are only using it to hold files, and are willing to wait the extra time, than i would go for the 500 gb because you are saving 40 dollars and have a bigger hard drive.
 
litebulb1.com said:
Firewire is faster than usb, but if you are only using it to hold files, and are willing to wait the extra time, than i would go for the 500 gb because you are saving 40 dollars and have a bigger hard drive.
Click to expand...

well, i'm mostly concered about reliability and steady performance. I don't want something that will die on me in a couple of months, and I don't like to get little annoying problems (e.g. you plug the browser in and it doesn't show up), and also i want it to be quiet and not get too hot. As for speed, how much is USB actually slower? I mean, if one transfers 1GB in ... for ex, 1 minute and the other in 1 min and 15 sec, then I don't really care.
 
Firewire is a lot faster for long sustained transfers, like moving big individual file. If you are moving a bunch of small files USB is more than fast enough. I don't know if the numbers are still accurate, but on an old usb2 controller (I think it was part of the i815e chipset) it took about 2 minutes to move a single 1GB file and firewire transfered the same file in about 1 minute 10 seconds. Moving 10000 someodd files totalling 1GB took USB about 2 minutes again and firewire took 1 minute 30 seconds.
 
Basically eSATA is an SATA port that is accessable from outside of your computer. It's faster than FireWire and USB.

Your macbook doesn't have esata, you may be able to get a controller card for it though
 
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