If your in the market for an external drive and your computer has Firewire 800 then do yourself a massive favour and pick up an external drive which has Firewire 800 too. My old external USB couldn’t cope with backing up the desktop and laptop so I invested in a 500 GB My Book Pro and the speed difference is very noticeable.
Looking at the specifications for USB 2 & Firewire 800 tells you that Firewire should be faster but real world difference for me was that the backup was a fifth of the time using the new drive against old – much faster than I was expecting. Speaking of the drive I’m fairly impressed with it as it’s quiet and has a nice finish too it. It’s also easy to power down unlike many others. I also intend to use the drive for Time Machine but only on certain key folders.
I had another thought on Time Machine – not much use for laptop users unless they are attached to an external drive, which aren’t always portable or convenient.
I notice that both DABS and ebuyer have it in stock. …
I have a few Q’s though:
It’s got a firewire 400 interface as well doesn’t it?
Did you have to get a separate firewire 800 cable or is that included?
How have you formatted the drive?
Does it have bundled backup software or are you sticking with Super Duper?
1) Yes, USB2, Firewire 400 and Firewire 800 interfaces are all included
2) All cables included.
3) The drive came formatted as FAT32. I formatted the drive as a Mac Extended drive and it allows files > 4GB
4) There is software on the hard disk itself and on supplied CD. For the mac there are two installs, a driver to support firewire and also backup software. The driver allows for intelligent update of the light on the front of the drive to show how much is stored. I’m afraid I’ve not tried the backup software and instead used Super Duper.