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User profile for user: cshepe
cshepe Author
User level: Level 1
0 points

Powerbook external hard drive

With a recent hard drive failure in my Powerbook I have learned a hard lesson, my nice, relatively new external 160 GB USB iomega hard drive is not capable of being a bootable drive. So, when my internal drive failed, I could not boot up my powerbook in OS 10.3.9 but only in sys 9.2. I also learned that when in sys 9.2, I cannot use any of my files in sys 10.

NOW I know that I needed to purchase a FIREWIRE drive, not a USB drive!

So my question is which firewire external drive should I buy so I can have a bootable back up drive? To use the program 'SuperDuper' I was told to purchase my firewire drive from OWC to insure compatibility. I am looking at
OWC Mercury Elite Pro Classic Portable FireWire 800/400/USB 2.0 250 GB for $179
or the OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro Storage 250 GB Firewire 800/400/USB 2.0 for $158
I expect to upgrade to either Tiger or Leopard before Christmas.

Any suggestions? Anything else I don't know about that is going to come back to haunt me? I don't want to 'goof again' on this purchase of yet another external hard drive. Thanks.

15" titanium powerbook, Mac OS X (10.3.9)

Posted on Sep 10, 2007 8:50 PM

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3 replies
User profile for user: Kenichi Watanabe
Kenichi Watanabe
User level: Level 8
41,572 points

Sep 11, 2007 4:53 AM in response to cshepe

The drives OWC sells are good. The drives you mention will work with your TiBook. But I like their miniStack drives. They are compact, and they double as a FireWire hub and USB hub. In the 250GB size, they currently have the "version 2" model on sale

http://eshop.macsales.com/item-specials/Newer%20Technology/MS2F7250G16/

It's on sale because OWC recently started selling "version 3." Note that version 2 is FireWire 400 and USB 2.0, while version 3 is FireWire 400 or 800 and USB 2.0 (plus eSATA). The drives you mentioned also seem to have FireWire 800. Your Titanium PowerBook only has FireWire 400, so the faster 800 capability would not be used (unless you later bought a new Mac with FireWire 800).

OWC also has empty miniStack kits. You may be able to open the Iomega case and move the drive (if it's a standard IDE drive) to another case that has FireWire.
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User profile for user: Kenichi Watanabe
Kenichi Watanabe
User level: Level 8
41,572 points

Sep 17, 2007 2:57 AM in response to cshepe

"Quad" just refers to the miniStack V3 drive having FOUR types of interfaces. They are FireWire 400, FireWire 800, USB 2.0, and eSATA. eSATA is an external version of the hard drive interface found inside the Mac. It is potentially a lot faster than even FireWire 800. No current Mac model has a built-in eSATA port, so it would not be useful unless you added that capability to your future MacBook Pro through an ExpressCard/34 adapter like this one from Sonnet.

http://www.sonnettech.com/product/temposataexpress34.html

FireWire 800 is plenty fast enough for most uses.
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Powerbook external hard drive

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