external hdd question

hi people
im getting an external hdd this week. i know usb2 is faster, but ive still been told to stick to firewire. i cant get firewire 800, as my mbp only got a 400. i heard fw is more reliable than usb2. anyway if anyone could classify this id appreciate it. also, is lacie where its at? should i spend less on another 1, or it lacie worth the extra?
thanks

if you're going to regularly use it for large transfers or backing up your system, go with firewire. otherwise, usb2.0 is fine. i've got two usb drives and both work just fine.

lacie is no better or worse than anything else. though you may be able to put one together cheaper by buying a hard drive and seperate enclosure, and mount the hd yourself (this is what both of mine are - one 2.5" and one 3.5" drive).

also, make sure to format fat32 if you ever plan on mounting it to a windows system at all (not mac journaled or ntfs).

itll be used on possibly both mac and windows, but mainly on windows storing raw footage, and other big files, films, tv programs etc.
can i ask, why choose firwewire for large transfers and backing up, if its 80kb/ps slower than usb, is it reliability?
know anywhere in the UK where i could mount th drive myself to make it external?
thanks eric.

I would say FireWire as it is daisychain-able and requires no hub. So you can plug one into the other, in series.

Also, only if you plan to use them with windows should you use FAT32. There are speed and security benefits to HFS+, like journaling.

as i understand it, usb speeds that you'll normally see aren't consistant. search the forums for firewire speed and i'm sure you'll find lots of specific info on actual speeds for firewire compared to usb.

http://www.barefeats.com/usb2.html

INSIGHTS:
1. USB 2.0 is much slower than FireWire 400 and 800. Apple states that the USB 2.0 ports on their Macs support transfer rates up to 480 megaBITS per second (Mbps), which translates to 60 megaBYTES per second (MB/s). The most we saw was 144 megaBITS per second or 18 megaBYTES per second.

Click to expand...

hanks for the replies. ice cream man, that link makes it clear, i need a firewire drive. thanks. i dont know a thing about formatting. itll be used with windows, once in a blue moon. ill put all my avi fils onto it when i get it, then all my raw mov files onto it from my mac. anyone care to explain what to do?
also. if i were to capture, using fcp 5.1, should i capture the th internal drive, then copy it over to the exteral, or is it ok to put it straight onto the external drive?
thanks again.

also, just found this on ebay, isit worth buying? how hard isit to replace the psu? inside of the hdd? id like a 3-way interface, just for the future, when i have a fw800 compatiable mac. if this isnt recommended, ill just get a 250gb fw400. thanks again

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/250GB-LaCie-d2-Hard-Drive-FAULTY-PSU_W0QQitemZ290064179783QQihZ019QQcategoryZ16178QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

And apparently there is a program that makes HFS+ readable in windows.
http://www.macdisk.com/mden.php3

Why don't we worry about teaching you to format, when you have it.

I recommend Seagate, and WesterDigital Drives. I advise against Maxtor.

LaCie is ok too

Ice Cream Man said:

I recommend Seagate, and WesterDigital Drives. I advise against Maxtor.

LaCie is ok too

Click to expand...

that's weird... i would recommend maxtor and wd. and against seagate... (my ex-father-in-law worked for seagate and even he said they were an accident waiting to happen...).

know nothing about hfs. thanks for your help, will look properly tomorrow, its late here.

Ice Cream Man said:

I recommend Seagate, and WesterDigital Drives. I advise against Maxtor.

LaCie is ok too

Click to expand...

Yeah, same here, i would recomend either of these two. I have not used a lacie drive yet so i dont know...

Technically USB 2 is faster that FW 400, however in reality that is often not the case. The difference arises in how the USB bus functions as opposed to a FW bus. If there are other USB devices on the same Bus or Hub as the external drive, they will sow the transfer speed down. The 480Mbs is the max for the Bus as a whole. FW 400 does not have this issue as the 400Mbs is the rated throughput per device no matter what else is going on on the FW Bus.