External FireWire Hard disk

Could someone please suggest a good external FireWire supporting harddisk that I could use with a MBP. It would primarily be for Time Machine only - 500GB preferred.

 

WD makes good FW capable external drives.

Or you can go to Other World Computing and get a pre-built or build your own OnTheGo Pro or ElitePro Mini.

 

Seagate also makes a few though you sometimes have to buy the FireWire 800 adapter (I assume you are talking about FireWire 800, the built-in port on the MBP and not FireWire 400). I have a WD 2TB My Book Studio LX and it has served me well though the drive tends to eject itself from time to time. I also have a Seagate portable 1TB model that was hooked up through FireWire 800 and I haven't had any issues with it.

One thing you didn't mention: did you want this to be a desktop external HDD or a portable one? The desktop models feature faster spinning HDD's, their own power supplies, and are often physically larger. The portable ones often have slower HDD's as they are powered from the USB/FireWire port and take up less space. I don't suggest sticking with just 500GB though. I came across a WD 500GB portable HDD for a little over $100 U.S. However, if you want a desktop model, you can pickup their 1TB My Book Studio for the same price.

In other words, once you decide on what type of external HDD you want, buy the maximum capacity that you can afford. There is no need to stick with just certain capacities when you can always use extra space.

 

LaCie makes a bunch of externals that support FW800 (they have eSATA, USB3 and TB drives too). I've generally had better luck with them than WD drives.

If aesthetics are important, Iomega makes drives with FW800 that tend to look better than most of the alternatives out there.

 

You don't say if you want a 2.5- or 3.5-inch drive. If the latter, it might be cheaper to buy a drive and enclosure separately and "build" it yourself.

 

this firewire drive looks pretty sweet. i may have to pick one up.

Amazon.com: Western Digital My Passport Studio 1 TB FireWire 800 External Hard Drive WDBK8A0010BBK-NESN: Electronics

drive prices are still high though. thats not specific to this listing.

 

I have two of those for work, they're great drives. I have the older model as well for my personal laptop (with the E-Ink display), that one I think is dying on me after about two years of abuse.

 

I have the e-ink one too and have used it for about a year but now it will randomly eject and re-connect itself when the drive isn't being used. OS X throws a fit but everything seems fine. I have everything on that drive backed up to a network drive via Time Machine so I won't lose anything if it goes.

I should mention that Western Digital launched their Thunderbolt external hard drives. They don't come with the $50 Thunderbolt cable and they are also really expensive. The baseline 4TB capacity is $600. They do feature some really fast read (700MB/s) and write (500MB/s) speeds though, especially for spinning HDDs. If you had $650 buring a hole in your wallet, those would be the best bet. I am guessing that isn't the case since you said you were limited to a 500GB capacity.

 

I recommend a toaster type of external drive bay

something like the NewerTechnology Voyager Q

Then you can use any size capacity 2.5" or 3.5" bare drive and plug it in. THere are probably some out there that support thunderbolt too but I haven't looked since I have an older mac and can't use thunderbolt connection. Thunderbolt would give you faster backups than firewire of course, but probably costs more for the drive bay and cable too.

Anyway, You can use the toaster with any size bare drive and use it with Timemachine. But these toasters are really nice for doing rotating backups with multiple bare drives. I keep 8 external 2TB bare drives in a fireproof safe. Every time I take a backups I take one drive out of the safe, plug it in and make my backup images (using something like CCC)... then the next time I do a backup I do the same thing except with drive #2... and so forth until I get back to drive #1 again. This way, if any back up drive should fail, I can always go to the next one to get the next closest backup. I use an eSATA connection for 100+MB per second writes to the backup drive.

Timemachine is great and it is convenient and it will definitely save you when you need it. But if that one backup drive fails then you are in trouble. That is why I rotate image backup among several drives. Or you could use both TimeMachine along with a rotating backup. TimeMachine for convenience and quick recovery, but the rotating backup images as a fail safe.

 

I use this dock myself, which basically does the same thing. Works great, and I can use its eSATA capability to connect a drive to my wife's notebook as well.

The only Thunderbolt drives I know of are the LaCie ones, and they're super expensive - $500+ for 2 TB.

 

there is a seagate thunderbolt Goflex drive adapter for 120 bucks. its just the connector. you pay for the 2.5 inch drive separate. you still need to buy a thunderbolt cable. performance on 2.5 inch connected ssds to the thunderbolt adapter has been extremely impressive.

 

Drive+adapter+cable = still very expensive.

 

Well, if you don't mind paying a little more, you could get a Lacie d2 quadra: http://www.amazon.com/LaCie-FireWir...I9L4/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1331924617&sr=8-2. Not the cheapest drive, but mine has been working very well so far, runs quite cool for a passively cooled external and has a lot of connectivity options which is great if you're going to use it for multiple computers. It also comes with all the cables: USB, firewire 800, firewire 400, IEEE 1394 and e-sata. I also like the fact that the enclosure uses screws instead of some type of latches, it allows for replacing the drive inside easily enough so if you end up needing more space, you can always buy a new bare drive. opening it will void the warranty though, but it save me from having to purchase a new enclosure when i accidentally knocked the drive over.

Oh and it would look good beside a macbook pro