Need An External HD
 

I'm trying to decide between these two external hard drives:

Western Digital 120GB USB 2.0 - $229.95

AND

Western Digital 120GB FireWire/USB 2.0 $249.99

It looks like they're pretty much the exact same drive except for another $20.00 you can get the FireWire/USB 2.0 Combo instead of the USB 2.0 only.

So my question is why would you pay an extra $20.00 bucks for the FireWire capability when USB 2.0 has a faster data transfer rate than FireWire? I just want to make sure that I'm not missing something here before I go pick one on these up.

go with firewire... it's a lot faster, and only 20 bucks more

Buy em seperately....

You can buy the USB 2.0 case for around $50 comes with all wires, cables, software, ect.... put any damn HD in it you want... just pay for the raw HD.. saves big bucks....


I just did up two of em for backups... total cost me around that $249 price...


:Graucho

USB 2.0 are faster than firewire, but many notebooks don't have or only have a few usb 2.0 plugs, so using firewire instead could save some of these.....this is the only reason I can think of?

If you don't follow fatbaby's excellent advise, you should check maxtor for some boxes too.

I'm pretty sure that USB 2.0 transfers data at 480Mbps and FireWire is 400Mbps

Now there's an option to consider :)

There are other differences between FireWire and UBB 2.0. Also, is this drive the true USB 2.0 (480 MBps) or the 1.2 USB that was recently re-branded as USB 2.0?