So wait - you are telling me that 480 Mbps for USB 2.0 and 400 Mbps for Firewire 400 are just flat out not acceptable for a backup device?

Yeah, the Firewire version is a bit faster because it's a dedicated path, but I did the tests personally and found that the 11% diff in speed was not worth the extra cash - at least to me.

Paying $179.99 for a 1 Gigabyte USB 2.0 drive is a great deal, $40 better than the 1 Gigabyte drive with the addition of a Firewire 400 port.

I would not want to use it as my main drive, but it'll work awesome with the new Leopard backup system on the Mac and works great as a backup drive on Windows XP.

If you absolutely crave the fastest, wouldn't it be best to stick with local internal drives when possible?

Just how much faster is the 1 Gig Ethernet in real world copy operations?

I have a 1 gig Netgear router, 1 gig Ethernet cards and I still have to wait for files to go back and forth from machine to machine.

Just because it is a theoretical max does NOT mean you actually get that in real world performance.

I'm kind of surprised that someone would just arbitrarily dismiss 480 Mbps and 400 dedicated Mbps as unworthy. You can shout specs from the rooftop, but in real world copy benchmarks, is there that much of a diff?

Try this Stopwatch program to time how long it takes to complete the copy / move / etc

http://www.jfitz.com/dos/index.html#STOPWATCH

Slap it in a batch file and go to town. I'll be curious to see what folks come up with. :)

I don't think you understand.

It has NAS built-in. That means it has an integrated file server that allows you to map the drive as a network drive from as many computers as you want. It also acts a print server if you attach a printer to the integrated USB port, so you can print documents over the network, from as many computers as you want. It's not about the speed. It's about the speed over a network accessible interface.

There is a big difference between transferring files over the network at 100Mbit/sec and transferring files over the network at 1000Mbit/sec.

1000Mbit lan = 125MBps, which is pretty much the ceiling for data transfer for hard drives these days.

100Mbit lan = 12.5MBps, which doesn't come close to using the speed most hard-drives can handle.

Paying $179.99 for a 1 Gigabyte USB 2.0 drive is a great deal...

I think you meant 1 Terabyte =p

p.s. That's a cool script. Thanks for the link.

One should note that USB has high CPU overhead compared to firewire. Firewire costs more to implement (license fee to apple, I believe)

A USB drive is going to be much faster than this Ethernet drive. If you need fast network transfers, you'll need to setup a server or get a corporate-grade NAS device. The strength of this device is being able to access it from multiple computers at the same time. Transfer speeds is its weakness.

This unit doesn't have a true print-server. It is not going to be compatible with allot of printers. Also, most printers these days already have built-in Ethernet and/or wireless.

Very good point - USB is much more CPU dependent, I'm sorry I forgot to mention that, but thanks for the catch. :)

Wouldn't having a multi-core processor pretty much make that moot, however?

So what happens when the drive goes bad? I would love to have something like: http://www.drobo.com but that is _way_ too expensive.

BTW - WHS is not an option as i need to support Windows, Mac, and Linux. And it has far too many bugs and data corruption issues.

Here's another alternative (byohdd): http://www.qnap.com -- I like it because it has tons of features.

"If you wanted to, you could even download a movie from home while you were on the road,"

Bahahahaha! Yeah, not in Australia. 256kbps up on most high-end plans is hardly going to cut it... even the fastest connections aren't greater than 1Mbps up.

Question - does it torrent? If so, it's a serious contender for my household.

Wish I could delete my comment.

DudeBoyz comparing USB2.0 or firewire drive is not apples to apples so the price comparison does not apply.

$329 is a decent price as long as it supports 1GE. If it does not support 1GE you can keep it. WD had the MyWorldBook with 1GE capabilities for about $370 at BestBuy last time I was there.

1GE? I don't know what that is, I guess. Can you explain?

Thanks

I'm assuming that by 1GE you mean 1000Mbit Ethernet, and yes, it does support it.

At that price, I'm very tempted to buy it, even though I really don't need it. =p
Also, Seagate/Maxtor drives come with an unparalleled 5 year warranty, so the deal just gets sweeter.

Same here...

Like I already said, I'm pretty sure that by "1GE" he means 1000Mbit ethernet connection (lan).

Just because it has a 1Gbit ethernet port on it does not mean the hardware will make good use of it. My myworldbook is painfully slow. I'm a WD fanboy, but I'll never suggest anyone ever get one of those things. You could probably transcribe the contents of the files you are trying to copy to that thing just as fast as the xfer. All the reviews of the WD unit I've seen talk about how painfully slow that unit is.

Make sure you read a few reviews of any unit before you buy it so you won't have to find out for yourself that the 1Gbit port acts more like 10Mbit port when you try to use it.

Best Buy had the 1TB external drives (USB 2.0) for $179.99. Western Digital.

Firewire version at $219.99

So 329? Nah. :)

But those drives don't have NAS (Network Attached Storage) capability built-in or the ability to attach a printer to the USB port and be a print-server as well.

wincement is right - apples and oranges. It's like saying $329 for the 1TB NAS or $999 for a 250GB laptop. There's a similar difference in functionality. :p

Dear Jacqueline, find another job.

Que? Was there an error in the reporting or something that would lead you to your opinion?

How about I come to where you work and heckle you anonymously for absolutely no reason? Sound good? Great.

Shut up, jerk.

That was uncalled for...

lol
that was uncalled for though seriously.

Perhaps it was the blurry picture?