Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Is $90 good deal for 250GB external seagate 7200 HDD with firewire/usb?

good deal? yes. nice size. firewire and usb is nice. 'full manufacturer's warranty applies' i would assume this the full 5 years.

i would caution you on tigerdirect.com rebates. they dont get good reviews on other sites. doesnt mean it wont happen. just follow the rules to the letter and document and copy everything.

great deal? not if you mind waiting for a deal and putting together an hd and case by yourself.
 
I'm not an expert, but think it's a great deal, but the enclosure and chipset could be the week link. Hard drive prices have been dropping fast, since the move toward SATA and more included RAM (16mb).

I would want to make sure the fan isn't too loud. I have a similar 250GB Seagate drive that came put together without a fan, in a plastic over metal case, with little airflow, from OWC for $200. I took the stupid plastic outer case off for better airflow. Modern hardrives don't seem to produce as much heat as older ones, but cooler is better.

I didn't see what kind of Firewire chipset was used? Oxford and Intitio(Seagate OEM) chipsets are apperently the best, but there may be substandard ones or those that don't work as well with Macs as well. Check storage review.
http://www.storagereview.com/
 
I bought one of these enclosures. It is complete crap!!! The fan made so much noise I had to take it out. I don't use the drive that much so I'm not worried about the drive overheating. I would take out the hard drive and install it in something else if you use it all the time. May I suggest this enclosure. I was going to buy this but haven't had any funds lately to do so....

Nuc
 
I would avoid the ultra enclosure altogether. I checked their website and their own tech forum details problems with this unit. Random disconnects, unable to boot, bad firewire, you name it.

The unit uses a Prolific chipset. Look for units that use the Oxford 911 chipset. They tend to be very reliable and work well with a Mac.
 
DZ/015 said:
The unit uses a Prolific chipset. Look for units that use the Oxford 911 chipset. They tend to be very reliable and work well with a Mac.
Click to expand...

Didn't even know that there were various firewire chipsets available, when I bought a Seagate 400GB OEM drive + enclosure. ($200 US)
Historically, making sure the FW devices used Oxford 911 chipsets seems to have been much more important, if you were a Mac owner.
I still run into long time Mac users that are very leary of anything else but the Oxford 911 chipset.
After some research and a little experience, the recent Initio [edit] FW chipsets also seem to work well with Macs. There's always the exception of a bad chipset firmware version or even a bad batch of Seagate drives, but I believe Initio is also a solid choice.
-
Dave
 
Macsales has some great external cases. However, you can do better purchasing your hd seperately than as a combo.

Here is what I did:
1) Keep open a MacSales page.
2) Find a good Seagate HD (with 5 year warranty) preferably 16MB buffer
3) Match up with drive and case specs (ide & ide, sata & sata)

Viola, a great setup.

Here are a couple Seagate deals on a quick search:

Seagate 250GB PATA
Seagate 320GB SATA

Newegg.com has additional Seagate deals going on so check them out too.
 
if you were looking just a week earlier, Outpost.com had a 400gb Seagate IDE drive for $99, then just buy a decent external enclosure for it. for a couple bucks extra you would have had almost twice the storage. generally you can find better prices if you buy an IDE drive and enclosure instead of just an external drive.
 
most cheap IDE are OEM though, which i want to avoid. i think im going to go with the OWC drive as it seems the have the best of everything: price, performance, aesthetics and quality.
 
slackersonly said:
i would caution you on tigerdirect.com rebates. they dont get good reviews on other sites. doesnt mean it wont happen. just follow the rules to the letter and document and copy everything.
Click to expand...

I bought a 17" monitor from them, normally $220, minus $120 with two rebates. Great deal but I worked for a total of two hours to do everything right and mail it. Just got them this week and I ordered it in early June! If you buy anything through them, make sure there is just one rebate. Two was a pain in the bum, but rebates in general are too.

Is the general consensus that Seagate manufactures the best hard drive?

Any other opinions?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back