Firewire 800 or USB 2 External enclousure

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Hi,

I am new to Mac and to my understanding firewire 800 is faster than USB 2? I just purchased a Seagate 1.5tb SATA drive and I would like to use this as an external enclosure. When shopping for an external enclosure should I look for a firewire or USB connection?
 

dtravis7


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Firstly, which Mac do you own? If it has a Firewire 800 Port then for sure go with a Firewire 800 case.

Never go by the basic numbers whatever you do. Firewire 400 is faster with sustained transfer of a lot of files over USB 2.0 even though the rating implies 480Mbps Vs 400Mbps. In real use however it never gets that fast doing sustained transfer at all. Firewire is much better at sustained transfer rate.

Firewire 800 is 2x faster than Firewire 400. It will fly and especially with large and many files.

I have the 1GB SATA version of your 1.5GB Seagate in a enclosure with USB 2.0, Firewire 400, Firewire 800 and even FW400 flies compared to USB 2.0 with the large files I copy over to it for backup.
 
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I just purchased a new Macbook Pro 17 inch. I think it comes with firewire 800 port.

Would you recommend a good enclosure I can use with my new 1.5tb drive that is firewire 800? Thank you!
 
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There's a ton of them out there, most of them are pretty generic hardware-wise.

OWC usually carries good stuff, especially their Mercury Elite line:

FireWire Enclosure Kits at OtherWorldComputing.com


Thanks alot for that link, I think I found the perfect enclosure. Matches my macbook pro very well.

g_s350sua.jpg



Macally G-S350SUAB Hi-Speed eSATA/FireWire 8... (GS350SUAB) at OWC


What do you guys think?
 

cwa107


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I just placed an order for that model. I hope it works with a Seagate 1.5 TB drive.

Thanks alot guys for all your help!
 

dtravis7


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I just placed an order for that model. I hope it works with a Seagate 1.5 TB drive.

Thanks alot guys for all your help!

As long as the Seagate is a 3.5" SATA (Serial ATA) hard drive it will work. Your drive for sure is a SATA 3.5" harddrive so don't worry. It will work fine.

That is a very nice looking enclosure BTW! Looks like a small Mac Pro! :D
 

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