which bus-powered drive?

L

Lenilenapi

Carbonite Member
I want to get 1 or 2 bus-powered portable 2.5" drives to download P2 cards from my 15" powerbook.

I'm a little confused over which parameters actually will affect download speed.
I know that I want a firewire 400 port at least as the USB seems to be slower.
However is there any point in spending the extra dollars on a firewire 800 port?
Also does it matter whether the disc is 5400RPM or 7200RPM?

For that matter, what aboutbrthe eSATA , firewire 800/400, USB drives?

If not for downloading, when do these speed differences come into play?

Any suggestions about brands? I figured I would go with the OWC On-The-Go drives, but even they use different drive manufacturers.

Thanks

- Lenny Levy
 
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I've got several 100 gig drives from OWC that are based around 2.5' laptop drives.
These drives have both USB and FW400, FW 800 is not useful in my workflow because I have a mac book which is only 400.

My drives are used as 'service' drives and get shipped around quite a bit to clients as far away as Britain. I' have not had any problems with any of my drives ( touch wood) and that is the happy story.
The drives come with power supplies but since they are bus powered either in USB or FW mode, the power supplies have been sitting on the shelf.
 
I've also got a 15" powerbook. I have 2 FW800/400/usb 2.5" HDD w/100gb 7200rpm
PATA drives. One is the plastic OWC model you mentioned. The other is a metal enclosure from RADTECH.
I bought the "fastest" ones available for powerbooks. FW800 seeems a little faster than FW400 but I haven't done any definative tests. Not sure about 7200 vs 5400 as I don't have 5400. Seems to take about 15min to dump a full 16gb P2 card. I've heard MacBookPro does it in half that time.
Stay away from USB only HDD. Powerbook does not supply enough power to run the HDD unless you use both usb ports on the Mac ! FW800/400 is the way to go.
Downside of 7200rpm is that it uses more batt. pwr than 5400. My powerbook internal HD is also 7200rpm and I get less than 3hrs on a batt.
Not sure, but I don't think SATA drives make any speed difference on powerbooks as there is no e-SATA connection . I would love to be proved wrong. Also e-SATA connection does not provide bus power.
I think I prefer the OWC HDD over the RADTECH even though it is all plastic. Seems more solid than the thin metal case. RADTECH model is supposed to be easier to swap out HD. OWC's manual sez removal may be a little difficult. Haven't tried removing it as I bought OWC pre installed.


































my $.02
 
Hmm,
You heard that a MacBook Pro will download in half the time?
That's a big advantage in the field. Where did you read that?
Waiting for a few 16G cards to download and then backing them up can slow the shoot down. That's why I want to buy the fastest drives.


My wife is lusting after my Powerbook, maybe its time to upgrade?
 
Yes, several corroborated reports from MBP users here w/express card adaptor have reported dumps around 8min/16gb card. Look up thread about fastest dnld times that I started maybe a couple months ago.
I intend to upgrade to MBP when new Mac OS comes out. Another thing to consider is the Panasonic 5 card reader(PD20?) which has FW800/400. That should buy you more time at the bar after a long day's shoot.
 
Thanks, That's interesting, and thanks for the link.
From what I gather from that thread perhaps FW800 is a bit faster than FW400, but still no direct comparisons from people. Nothing clear about the 5400 vs 7200.

On the faster downloads to MacBook Pro, is that only to the internal disk?
I am more interested in download speeds to an external disk though. Does the Macbook pro also speed those up?
 
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