baggss said:
Actually, if you are speaking of USB 2, it has a faster theoretical transfer rate (480Mbs) vice that of Firewire 400 (400Mbs). In reality they are more or less the same however.
Oh no, they are not. Have you ever benchmarked it? I have. The same brand new Seagate 7200 RPM drive in the same case (a MacAlly FW400/USB2 case) run from a Mac Mini: The USB 2.0 was almost twice as slow as Firewire 400 in doing a 1.3 Gb file copy.
Before you all go crazy on swapping drives around; SATA (Serial ATA) and PATA (Parallel ATA also known as UltraATA, IDE, ATA100 or ATA133) use completely different connections. External Firewire and USB cases are 99% made for PATA (IDE) drives. SATA drives won't work in a PATA (IDE) case.
The PowerMac G5s and MacPros use SATA drives internally and will not take PATA (IDE) drives without some type of adaptor.
ALL G4 and G3 machines take PATA (IDE) drives and cannot take SATA without an adaptor.
One good reason to build your own drive is that you'll get the full 3 or 5 year manufacturer's warranty on the hard drive mechanism. Ready-made externals often have only 1 year, and void the warranty if you open the case (such asm when you are trying to scavenge your data from a drive befre sending it in for warranty repair...). When buying hard drive mechanisms however, make sure you are getting new drives with the full manufacturers warranties in writing, not 'pulls' or used or reconditioned (recertified) or debranded drives with littel or no warranty.
As far as the MacPro goes, absolutely buy it with the stock drive, and then purchase and install 3 additional SATA drives of your own. You'll pay much less, get the full warranty, and have your choice of brands and capacities.
Thanks
Trevor
CanadaRAM.com