Advice on purchase of USB drives?

Can anyone out there advise me? I want to buy about one TB worth of cheap USB drives to use as backup.

Any thoughts about brands and reliable places to order online would be greatly appreciated.

Happy New Year to all, and thanks for all the good advice I've received here over the last 12 months.

Best

Harry

i cant imagine why youd want USB in the first place? its not any cheaper than firewire and you cant edit from it.

if you do go USB make sure you go USB 2.0, as standard USB is too slow to even use as backup.

Thanks for the reply, Wayne,

Well, it's just that I was looking at the Fry's ad today and they're selling an Iomega external 250GB USB2 for $109 after rebate ($159 in store).

I didn't know you could get firewire drives at that price. Can you tell me where? - Because obviously firewire would be better.

I need something to back up my fab new 1TB G Raid.

Best

Harry

there are lots of guys here who build their own firewire drives for close to that price.

but i say that iomega box sounds pretty good, ive never had one of their products fail on me...

ok. Thanks for the advice. I'm not confident enough to build my own firewire drive.

If you have any other thoughts, please let me know.

Many thanks,

Harry.

how much more are the FW drives?

think about how much time you'll save if you use FW drives.
rather than have to wait 10hrs for the media to copy across,
you can start working straight away.

it would drive me crazy having drives i couldn't edit from if i had to.

still, it's very smart to be thinking about back-up.

cheers,
happy new year,
nick

If you do get a USB drive, make sure it's not the only drive you have. If you are looking for an all-purpose drive, get FireWire. The slightly faster copy speed of a USB 2 drive isn't worth the loss in versatility. FireWire drives tend to run about $1 per GB. You can't skimp too much on equipment; the decision will come back to haunt you. People regret even buying slightly cheaper FireWire drives when it comes down to the wire.

Harry.
It's dead easy to build your own drive. You take apart the box normally with a screw or two, screw the drive in the box with the fittings supplied and plug the cable into the drive, then screw the box back together. Plug in the FW cable and the power cord.

Fry's have a 300 GB Seagate drive on sale for $69.00 after rebate $129.00 in store and a FW + USB 2.0 box should run you about $60.00 at Fry's as well. Although you can find box' like that online for about $35.00. That ends up being about the same price but you will be getting FW.+ USB 2 and an extra 50 GB. And you will know that you have a good drive should anything go wrong with it you can pull it out and install a new one at a later date. Who knows what drives iOmega uses? Maxtors?

The only advice I have regarding purchasing USB drives is = DON'T. FW800 is KING.



When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

Thank you all very much for your advice.

Harry.

I've heard some conjecture around the web that with the intel macs firewire will go away - intel supports usb, not firewire.

any thoughts on this?

hd - the other Harry! :-)