reeldeal Posted September 6, 2004 Report Share Posted September 6, 2004 I want an external drive to hook up to my laptop. I only have a firewire card for my ipod and don't have usb 2.0. I want to be able to use it with a dvd burner (not purchased yet) and if possible a secondary hard drive (not purchased) is there anything i need to know before buying the drive? I was just planning on grabbing it from ebay if possible. thanks for any info mark Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bickle Posted September 6, 2004 Report Share Posted September 6, 2004 Make sure it has an internal fan. They get pretty hot, so an internal fan is a necessity. USB2.0/Firewire combo is nice, but more expensive. But, it gives you the added flexibility that you can take it to friend's places & you know that it will work. My enclosure is a pain in the ass to add/remove drives (you can't easily get to the screws to secure the drive), but there's really no way to know that until you have it in hand. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
reeldeal Posted September 6, 2004 Author Report Share Posted September 6, 2004 will a hard drive (3.5) fit in a 5.25" drive? or would i need two different drives? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bickle Posted September 7, 2004 Report Share Posted September 7, 2004 You can get a 3.5" specific enclosure, such as this one, or you can get a 3.5" and 5" drive that will work for both, such as this one. AFAIK, not all 5" enclosures will work with 3.5" drives though. I'd make sure that it specifically states it as a feature. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rustyjaw Posted September 7, 2004 Report Share Posted September 7, 2004 If you're going for a FireWire enclosure for your HD, get one with an "Oxford" chipset (it's the bridge between the IDE connector on the drive and the FW interface on the enclosure). Oxford is a high-performance chipset that will give you decent speed from the drive, a lot of cheap boxes use cheap bridges which will effectively slow down your data rate. Last time i checked, very few if any USB 2.0 enclosures could match FW in terms of throughput, but to be honest I haven't seen specs in several months, so the USB 2 boxes may have caught up (FireWire boxes were slow at first too, until the Oxford boxes arrived). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
reeldeal Posted September 7, 2004 Author Report Share Posted September 7, 2004 thanks guys i'll let you know how it works Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bickle Posted September 7, 2004 Report Share Posted September 7, 2004 They are pretty neck and neck now from what I was reading, but Firewire still has a slight edge. Not that I'd ever notice the difference. Personally I use the FW port, just because it keeps a USB port open on my computer. Unfortunately it can be difficult to determine the chipset from online stores and manufacturer's sites. I found an awful lot of inconsistancies, and finally just ordered one, on a "best guess" of what I was getting. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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