Firewire 800 Caddy

redneon

redneon

redneon

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Joined
4 Jan 2005
Posts
65
I'm looking to buy an external hard drive for my iMac and I've been informed that it's much more cost-effective to get a caddy and just stick and IDE or SATA drive inside it.

Thing is, I want to use firewire 800 for the faster transfer speed but I can't find any caddies that support firewire 800. They all seem to be USB2.

Does such a thing exist?
 
Well, I'm after a 750gb drive if possible and I have about £100 to spend. The cheapest 750gb built-in one I've found is this one on [Some other site]:

URL Removed, I like my ass.

I've also seen that on [Some other site] I can get a 750gb SATA drive for just under £60:

URL Removed, I like my ass.

So, unless a caddy is going to cost me £40 I should make a fair bit of a saving.

I also like the idea that I can just replace the drive in a caddy if it breaks.

EDITED
 
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I would rather have the above and 5 year warrenty on complete unit instead of messing about and may get issues with connection or heat etc etc.


Your £100 buys the WD 500GB, I know the 750GB is more, but your limited to any choices as you want 1394b which is more a Mac thing than PC.
 
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Heh, I didn't think about it to be honest. It's edited now.

The WD 750gb one is £109, and it's USB2 only, as far as I can see...

Am I missing something?
 
Ah, that's the one.

I know that firewire is more of a Mac thing than PC. Well, actually, Macs are switching to USB for the most part now. The MacBook Air doesn't have any firewire ports, for example.

I really like the sound of 100mb/sec, though.

There's a small chance that this drive may end up replacing my internal drive because my internal drive has started to get a few bad sectors. So it's only a matter of time before the whole thing goes. The reason I'm looking to FW800 is because of the bad sectors. If it's going to replace my main hard drive I want the fastest transfer speed available so it'll be more of a viable replacement to an internal drive.

I don't think 50mb/sec will cut it for an internal drive replacement. I might be wrong, though. It just doesn't seem like much.
 
It would be 50MB/Sec if thats what you worked out FW800 to not Mb/Sec.

If you want as fast as an internal (without using an internal for whatever reason) you need use ESATA as its SATA300.
 
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Yeah I meant MB. I always use lowercase, for some reason.

I can't really use internal because I have an iMac and it's a right arse to replace the hard drive in an iMac. I could get the Apple Store to do it but they'd charge me more than I'm willing to pay, I reckon.

ESATA isn't exactly an option for me either, as my iMac doesn't have an ESATA port :(

ESATA has a transfer rate of 300MB/sec, which is only three times faster than FW800. It's six times faster than USB2, though.
 
Lol, only 3x is a lot and thats the MAX of the interface no HDD today hits even 150MB/Sec sustained but will burst.

I think you need to throw the MAC in the bin and get a PC. :p
 
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