Looking for an external hard drive, firewire 400 or 800?

[JuicyDbase]

I have been reading that some people have concerns about windows xp sp2 not liking firewire 800. I am running xp sp2, both xp and xp media center and I am running with a firestudio.

Which will get me the fastest connection without any problems with hardware or software not accepting the 400 or 800. Are there any problems with these?

Also, I have been looking at external hard drives and I only like seagate. They have sadly changed their old grey and black hard drives with these new oddly and inconveniently shaped external hard drives. Does anyone have any experience with these new ones? Are they as bad as they look? Any negatives or positives?

Also there is another option. Because of the odd shape and raised price of the new seagates. I am not all about looks of course. But I have been looking into a mac mini and it would be nice to have one of those external hard drives that look like another mac mini and just sit underneath the mac. Has anyone had any experience with these? Any negatives or positives? Thanks.

 

[dgatwood]

Also there is another option. Because of the odd shape and raised price of the new seagates. I am not all about looks of course. But I have been looking into a mac mini and it would be nice to have one of those external hard drives that look like another mac mini and just sit underneath the mac. Has anyone had any experience with these? Any negatives or positives? Thanks.

I was considering buying one to hook up to my Airport base station, but discovered that despite having USB and FireWire ports, the USB part is just a standalone hub. For a Mac Mini, that would be fine. For my ABS (which only has USB), that was a show-stopper.

Not really a pro or con, just something to be aware of if you're shopping for that kind of drive.

 

[charger]

I'm sorry to tell you I've had nothing but bad experiences with Seagate drives, so I can't comment on those.

Generally, I buy whatever is on sale at Fry's. I did get a truly awesome drive at newegg.com, it was a LaCie that had USB 2.0, Firewire 400, AND Firewire 800. Truly an awesome, fast drive, at a great price. Unfortunately, it was the one external drive I had that used a different type of power connector... I plugged the wrong connector in, and popping and frying sounds and smells emanated from within.

So now I have a couple of home-built externals (I bought enclosures and stuck ATA drives in them) and I have one by Buffalo Technology, I think it is.

I don't have a Firewire 800 card, so I use Firewire 400. My friend has a FW 800 card and it seems a bit faster, and hasn't caused any problems, using Win XP Pro. So I think it's fine either way.