17" MBP with an external hard drive

[bazotic]

I'm going to be ordering my MBP within the next few weeks, but I don't think the 100GB is going to be enough for me. I have never owned a notebook or Mac before, so I don't know if you can add to the hard drive. I decided to get an external hard drive with 80GB on it. I have been looking at the SmartDisk FireLite because it's been getting some great reviews. I wanted to put my XP and windows stuff on it, and I've found a few people who have done that. I wanted to know if anyone here had, and how it works for them.

 

[citi]

I use the firewire version and its a good little harddrive. It's extremely portable and is self powered. If you are going to use it on the mbp...you need to buy the firewire version. There is not enough usb bus power to run the usb2 version.

Also, windows and mac can see and use the same hard drive.

 

[MovieCutter]

I have 8 external drives (3x500GB, 4x250GB, 1x800GB) connected to my 17" MBP via FW400 and FW800...works great. Haven't really used them for Windows.

 

[bazotic]

I will definatly get the firewire version, I'm so sick of dealing with slow USBs. When I asked if anyone had put the XP on their hard drives, I meant the OS XP, I've been told there's a way to do it, and I want to try it, if it runs smoothly.
http://forum.onmac.net/showthread.php?t=1015

 

[BurtonCCC]

80GB is not very much at all. I would get at least a 160GB drive from LaCie. I have one and I fill it up quite easily with backups of all my music, DVDs, pictures, apps, etc.

Daniel.

 

[indigoflowAS]

the 2.5" LaCie drives are gorgeous, I was very close to getting one of those.

To your question...I imagine that if you partition the drive, you should be able to put both Windows and OSX stuff on it. Now for random datastorage...I have a 120GB external that is formatted to the MS-DOS File System and I use it to transfer and store files between my PC and Mac. Hope that helps.

 

[Mernak]

if you want a portable Hd then by all means get the 80 but you can get a Hd that stays on your desk for a lot cheaper, especially buying a firewire case and a hard drive on sale(just found a 160GB seagate for $60 plus tax and the cost of the enclosure)

 

[bazotic]

if you want a portable Hd then by all means get the 80 but you can get a Hd that stays on your desk for a lot cheaper, especially buying a firewire case and a hard drive on sale(just found a 160GB seagate for $60 plus tax and the cost of the enclosure)

How would that work? What would I need to do and buy? I've never heard of that before.

 

[citi]

How would that work? What would I need to do and buy? I've never heard of that before.

it's actually very easy. go to a pc site like newegg.com and buy the barebones hd and then buy an external firewire/usb2 enclosure. Just open up the enclosure set the jumpers and plug in the cable attached to the enclosure to the hard drive. Close it back up...plug it in. I have two external drives that I bought from newegg.

This is the one I bought about a month ago

enclosure - very small but super fast response time.
http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16817106095

WD hard drive which I bought on sale for like 69 with one of their 1 day sales.
http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16822144392

I reccomend them completely - very fast shipping plus alongside standard payments you can pay via paypal

Citi

 

[bazotic]

Wow, this sounds great! I found a HD I like
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822148105

Anyone know of any not very expensive firewire cases? I couldn't find any on newegg

 

[indigoflowAS]

Wow, this sounds great! I found a HD I like
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822148105

Anyone know of any not very expensive firewire cases? I couldn't find any on newegg

That HDD looks like a great deal...this enclosure is very popular, I may pick one up here in the near future.