"Folkert Rienstra"wrote
snip
Nope.
Indeed.


"Rod Speed" wrote
Really depends on what you do to move the files
to and from the external drive and whether you
will ever do that using the new faster firewire 800
Generally they cant. I was more referring there to the
firewire alt and should have said that more carefully.


Andy wrote
See:

http://www.aldi.co.uk/specials_01_11/offers_nav.htm

160 Gig Firewire/USB2 for £120 today. I've just picked one up and my
local
store (Mold, North Wales) seemed to have about 30 left.

Seems to be the same as the EZ Disk drive from:

http://www.amacom-tech.com/main.html

The Amacom drives seem to retail at around £300 VAT inc but they are only
either
Firewire or USB2.

Box shows; Seagate, Ultra ATA, Smart, Firewire, USB2, Logos. 7200RPM,
Vert or
Horiz mounting, On/Off switch, 2MB Cache. Model Medion MD 40308. Seems
solidly
built. 3 years Guarantee.


Hi gentlemen,
thanks for your comments. It interesting to notice how firewire is faster
than usb2.0, even though usb2.0 has the higher throughput spec. Anyway I am
not intending to do any A/V editing with this *external drive*, just to be
able to back-up a load of data before the system is *reformatted*. For
compatibility sake I think usb1.0/2.0 is the way to go.

Andy: thanks for *ALDI* link, never heard of them before. Interesting to
see that they are offering:
http://www.aldi.co.uk/specials_01_11...ssortment.html ?

That external drive seems very good value, almost too good? hmmm. I ordered
last night a Belkin Hi-Speed USB 2.0 External Drive Enclosure Kit F5U209uk
(£58.74) in which I will slap either an older drive or a new 80GB one, but
please post back how u get on with that *ALDI* special!

One more quick question, would an older computer have a problem
*recognising* a huge disk capacity if it was via the USB interface?
--
Wayne ][