external hard drive advice please

[embee]

Want to get something as a back-up, USB external hard drive seems most suitable (don't have firewire anyway). Nothing spectacular, hopefully under £100 for 250Gb-ish should do me nicely. Seen lists in Dabs/Misco etc.

Any advice on make/model for reliability or included software etc??
Seagate, Western Digital, LaCie????
:-k

[empty]

Assuming you are running Windows XP, any USB or Firewire external drive will be supported without additional drivers. May be cheaper to buy a case and the drive seperately, unless you want the "one touch" backup thing that some of the branded makes have (although can't remember which ones). The external drives are either a SATA or IDE drive, depending on what type of case it is.

There is little to choose between Firewire and USB2 in terms of speed.

MT

[Grinch]

There is little to choose between Firewire and USB2 in terms of speed.

MT

While this may be true with the figures, the way the architecture works for USB2 (universal SERIAL bus 2) it is still slower due to its Serial bus and the negations it has to make to the bus.
Firewire is direct thus some what faster... though not as flexible.

[Razor]

I was thinking of this, but just to use as somewhere to store pics, music and stuff.
I don't want a little ipod type thing as I'd lose it or get it nicked...
Gotta get a new camera first I s'pose(but that would be a whole other thread)

[TC3]

I am getting a 250 gb external drive as back up. It is a Lacie drive and uses Seagate hardware. Good value for money....look here

http://www.savastore.com/productinfo/product.aspx?catalog_name=Savastore&product_id=10273585&pid=44&rstrat=0

[TC3]

There is little to choose between Firewire and USB2 in terms of speed.

MT

While this may be true with the figures, the way the architecture works for USB2 (universal SERIAL bus 2) it is still slower due to its Serial bus and the negations it has to make to the bus.
Firewire is direct thus some what faster... though not as flexible.

Funny that has the IT guy at work says USB2 is faster than firewire

[empty]

Ain't Firewire serial too? There isn't enough pins in the connector (either 4 or 6 depending on whether it has powering available or not), implying two twisted pairs, one for serial data each way. USB has 4 pins so 2 for power 2 for data, can't remember if it is a twisted pair or two singles. USB can have many devices on a port, I believe Firewire can too, but I've always used firewire with 1 port 1 device.

Haven't done much development on either, when designing circuit boards + doing test software (many moons ago) handed that bit over to the code monkeys, since the section for USB was about 20 times as thick as the bit for stuff I knew about, and had state machines and DMA stuff in. I just wanted to do some kind of loopback test or plug a mouse in and see if it detected it, but in the time available before the next board was due it wasn't going to happen. Haven't dealt with firewire much so can't really comment. In computer terms both seem to have similar overheads processor wise, and both will be faster than the hard disk at the other end (probably - max will be around 50MB per second (bus limited), sustained somewhere in th 25-40MB/sec range (drive limited)).

Firewire 800, now that be a whole new kettle of fish. And virtually impossible to find anything for.

MT

[Terence]

There is little to choose between Firewire and USB2 in terms of speed.

MT

While this may be true with the figures, the way the architecture works for USB2 (universal SERIAL bus 2) it is still slower due to its Serial bus and the negations it has to make to the bus.
Firewire is direct thus some what faster... though not as flexible.

Funny that has the IT guy at work says USB2 is faster than firewire
Maybe he's a muppet? One of the tools of my trade is a set of Virtual PC hard drives, several big files in the 2-3 Gb range, which I keep on my 400 Gb seagate unit. It has both firewire and USB2 interfaces. When copying these big files firewire is noticably faster, but with smaller files (photo's, documents) its hard to tell... but USB2 is definitely not faster.

A real drawback with firewire is that not all PC's have firewire ports on them whereas USB2 is ubiquitous. If only for maximum capability USB2 is the best.

[fizzwheel]

I bought an Imega USB2 300gb drive for a temporary backup at work. It worked really well. £110

[Wadda]

I bought a 250gb external USB2 HD from PC World just beofre Xmas and I can not live without it now. Only cost me £90 and was a great buy. I am going to need another one soon!

[Filipe M.]

IIRC, USB2.0 sends data in bursts, Firewire/IEEE1394 keeps a constant stream. That's why you can send DV uncompressed video streams over Firewire (like from DV Camcorders), but can't do it over USB2.0.

[Carsick]

Another factor that makes firewire quicker is the fact that you have a very small number of ports, and if I'm remembering the correct specs, each one pretty much operates independently to the others. USB ports (1.1 and 2) all operate over a single bus, so overall speeds might be fantastic, but like a network connection, it's all spread out between the stuff going on and I believe that's the reason it works in bursts.

On the other hand, I only just woke up from last night and my head still feels a teensy bit fuzzy, so I may be talking cod****.