refresh rate/external hard drive

[mizzi]

i have a new 15" powerbook...2 gigs of ram, dual displays, and i'm loving it. after more than 10 years in front of a pc, this is a dream come true. i just wanted to check on 2 things.

1 - What should the refresh rate on my screen be set to?

2 - I have a 200 gig internal hard drive from my PC i'd like to convert to an external via firewire for my powerbook. what do i need to purchase by way of a case to make this happen? anything i should be aware of durring this process?

thank you very much for any help or suggestions.

-Mark

 

[yellow]

Since it's an LCD screen, I don't think you can fiddle with the refresh rate too much. It's pretty much standard at 60Hz, AFAIK.

I would suggest an enclosure that has both firewire and USB 2.0., and comes with it's own power supply. USB power on the apple laptop bus is pathetic and will cause you nothing but troubles. And you cannot boot from a USB device, so having firewire (and cloning to it for a back up) is a Good Idea.

Just note, in order to install OS X on it, the drive has to be HFS+. If you want to use it with a Mac and a PC, then it should be FAT32, as Mac OS X cannot (reliably) write to NTFS. If you purchase MacDrive for your PC, it can read/write HFS+.

 

[mizzi]

thank you very much for the help. any specific brands that are noteworthy? i work well with links to products so if anyone has any available it would be greatly appreciated

 

[yellow]

I've had success with this one: http://www.iogear.com/main.php?loc=product&Item=GHE835C

 

[mizzi]

I've had success with this one: http://www.iogear.com/main.php?loc=product&Item=GHE835C

thanks, that looks quite nice. do you know roughly how much they run?

 

[yellow]

Looks like about $100, but pretty much any one will work. Just make sure the chipset in it will all for larger disk sizes.

You can also look at:

http://www.newegg.com
http://www.macsales.com

 

[mizzi]

thanks! you've been an awesome help, very much appreciated.