04-02-2007, 01:25 PM

Hello. I have a 1.25 15inch G4 Powerbook.

Its only got 80gigs and I need way more then that so....

1, am I right in thinking this machine only has usb 1 / I know it has firewire 400.

2, can someone please suggest a good external HD for me.

It doesn't seem any cheaper to buy an internal drive and fit a caddy not in the 500gig range anyway.

Has anyone used this Maxtor drive?

http://www.dabs.com/ProductView.aspx...1003&InMerch=1

or this Freecom drive?

http://www.dabs.com/ProductView.aspx...0683&InMerch=1

. I was wondering if I only have USB 1 then will the write and read speeds be really low compared to usb 2 or firewire.. maybe I am better getting a firewire 400 drive?

Still I hope to upgrade to a Macbook Pro soonish.. Well whenever they release the next updates.

Please help me out if you can. Thanks, Andy.

04-02-2007, 01:31 PM

I was wondering if it might be better to use this caddy and an internal Hd as this would give me use of my firewire ports.

http://www.ebuyer.com/UK/product/74827/rb/26624609324

Has anyone used this caddy. It has a fan but in peoples review they said its no problem to remove and if your HD doesn't run hot its not needed?

Please let me know what you think, Thanks, Andy.

04-09-2007, 12:55 PM

I brought one of those caddys but the build quality is not that good and it is very noisy. I have a Maxtor 200GB drive in it, but the drive is not very reliable either.

I would reccomend getting a Western Digital, such as this:
http://www.ebuyer.com/UK/product/111982

It would be worth spending a bit more on a quality drive, data is important.

It has USB2, Firewire 400 AND 800 ports. Firewire 400 is faster than USB 2, especially for sustained transfer, but FW800 is very fast.

My PowerBook G4 1.33GHz (15 inch) has USB2 ports (aswell as a Firewire 800), but I'm not sure about the 1.25GHz version.

04-09-2007, 01:02 PM

I bought a 300GB Maxtor One-Touch from Costco for about $140. It's not the quietest drive in the world, but then, I only use it for backups of my two notebooks (one Mac, one Dell). I've tried it with both the USB 2.0 connection on my MacBook Pro and the FW400. Even though the USB2 connection is supposed to have higher throughput, the backups are much faster with the FW400 connection. My suggestion would be to either buy an enclosure or a preconfigured external drive that has both (they're usually not too much more). Then you don't have to worry about the speed of USB.

I also own a DIY external enclosure (I think the brand name is Metal Gear or something like that) and it's not exactly the best quality. The drive is mostly exposed and very noisy.