External Hard Drives

[RadioNate]

I figured I'd post this here instead of the CB. Does anyone use a firewire drive for storage.

I do most of my photo/video editing on a Mac.

Any recommendations?

[LordAthens]

I have 3 external 1394 drives and 2 USB2.0 drives.

As for recommendations, I would recommend NOT buying a pre-built drive. You pay WAY to much for what they are actually worth.

I would check out newegg.com, look for a drive in the size you want and then get an external enclosure (also from newegg) and assemble it yourself. Usually it's considerably cheaper.

[fiffy]

We use an external drive at my job which hooks up threw a firewire connection. We have had it for quite a while and have had no problems with it. They do get hot so don't leave them on for long periods of time. And when your not useing it you probably should unplug it from your computer if its not a major pain so nothing transmits over to it. I honestly don't remember what brand it is though.

[LordAthens]

They do get hot so don't leave them on for long periods of time.

That's a problem with the enclosure. Any proper external case will get quite warm but never hot. Leaving them turned on 24\7 will have no ill effects and in most cases will actually prolong drive life if you use them daily.

And when your not useing it you probably should unplug it from your computer if its not a major pain so nothing transmits over to it.

Right off the bat, exactly what is going to "transmit" to it if the drive isn't in active use? Having read some of your wonderful posts here in the Photog forum, I can only guess your answer will be many hundreds of virii.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with leaving it plugged in and turned on or any combination there of.

Additionally, it's "through", not "threw".

[Kelly Grannell]

I use 4 external HDD, 200 Gb each. One for photo, one for family videos, one for MP3 (all legitimate, by the way - no downloads), one for music. Used them for 2 years and I only turn them on when I need to grab something or back something up. No problem so far.

I just buy Western Digital HDD for all of them and I buy a separate external case by Bytecc (about US$30 each, the case, I mean).

[RadioNate]

cool, I'll looking into building one. I'd love for it to be cross platform but I'm not sure is possible with all drives. Time to research I guess.

Thanks

[lovwdwalot]

I use an Lacie External hard drive 160gb with Lacies you can use it with an firewire 400 or 800 or with your USB port. Great drives very quiet, I went to cnet.com to read reveiws on external hard drives to get a better feel for what is the price and what the opinon is on what is the better drives to use.

[lovwdwalot]

cool, I'll looking into building one. I'd love for it to be cross platform but I'm not sure is possible with all drives. Time to research I guess.

Thanks
All Mac hard drives even external drives are formated as HFS+, so you will not be able to use them both on a Mac and a PC.

I should have said that a external hard drive that will be used for a Mac will be set up as an HFS+