Acomdata bus powered 120gb firewire/usb2 for $85 @ Fry's.

[Wailer]

I'm looking for a bus powered drive and this looks like a pretty good deal:

http://shop1.outpost.com/product/5180886

Does anyone know if you can boot of of this?

How painful is a 2mb cache if used mostly for backup and transferring large dv files? I'm not going to be using it as scratch space.

I'm guessing the drive can easily be swapped out. Since this drive is both firewire and USB2.0, does that mean that it supports 2.5" drives larger than 120gb?

[Wailer]

gee...I just looked up the specs on the stock 30gb Toshiba in my g4 ibook and it's a 4200rpm, 2mb cache drive.

So I guess the performance can't be much worse. Upgrading the drive in this ibook is too much of a pain.

[Jimmypoo]

a new class of 5400 rpm & 2mb cache should beat the pants off your tibook version. SHOULD. That said, I've had 2004 versions of 72s and 54s that the performance was identical.

The cache of 8MB in my first "better drive" (also a 7200) pounded them both.

Still -- via FW, you should have no problem pumping 25mb/sec across that drive.
Can't say the same via USB, but with 6 to 6 and 6 to 4 firewire, I don't see much need for USB via a Mac.

And yes, on an intel mac you can boot from either USB or FW. From PPC mac, just the FW.

[jdc]

i use an 80 gig FW firelite drive for everything and the speed on its 5400 rpm drive is more than enough (no idea on cache)

transferring gigs of data only takes minutes, well about 1 gig per minute, slightly slower than a 3.5" FW drive

[Panopticon]

I agree with the others but have a problem with the price.
That's 71¢ per GB. IIRC, several vendors have had much better deals on 2.5" portables lately. Check Staples, OD, etc.

btw, On your G4 iBook, using a bus powered drive isn't going to do the battery any favors either. AC adapter would be a nice thing to come with the drive.

[deckeda]

[quote Panopticon] ... IIRC, several vendors have had much better deals on 2.5" portables lately. .../quote]

With FireWire?