External Firewire Harddisks

optimus · 14 Jul 2007 at 17:55

I'm looking at getting a slim hard disk to go with my laptop which has Firewire and USB.

Should I get a firewire disk, or a USB disk?

mosfet · 14 Jul 2007 at 18:16

Depends on your needs. USB is more prevelant than Firewire, better for instance if you need to use the drive with other computer (which may not have firewire ports), but Firewire is slightly higher performance, due to lower overheads and lower CPU utilisation.

Both should be adaquate for bus-powering a 2.5" drive, removing the need to plug it into a wall socket.

optimus · 14 Jul 2007 at 18:21

Any recommendations on a drive?

I'm gonna use it for storing software and VM's

Greenlizard0 · 14 Jul 2007 at 22:27

I used to have a Western Digital 400GB model but am currently looking at a new one now. I found that WD's software was god awful but in terms of transfer speeds it wasn't too bad.

With my one you had two USB ports, so you could double your speed by connecting two plugs. Whether you could also connect the Firewire one to make that three connections I'm not sure really..