On Saturday, February 22, 2003, at 12:45 PM, Don Wakefield wrote: > It is time to get a jumbo HD and I need help choosing > between ATA and Firewire...since ATA is so Windoze oriented do I > need to worry about formatting or are the HD's > platform independant? Same question for Firewire,,,If ebay or whoever, > doesn't say it works in a Mac, can I expect it to work in mine?
ATA is platform-neutral. In fact, almost all Firewire drives are ATA drives with bridges. Chances are awfully good that if it doesn't say it (a firewire drive) will work on a Mac, it will anyway after you've formatted it with Disk Utility &c. I guess your real question to yourself should be, do you want something "portable" like an external firewire drive, or something more permanent like an internal ATA drive? Your cheapest option is to get a raw internal ATA hard drive, plug and play (may I suggest Seagate?). Oh, and for your own sanity, don't buy hard drives from e-bay unless they come with a warranty. I suggest eshop.macsales.com (OWC) for all your internal and external drive needs. Oh, and I'm quite partial to the new gigantic and rather inexpensive Western Digital firewire/usb2 external drives, although OWC doesn't sell these (having trouble finding someone who does, actually). Hope this helps. --Chris PM7500/200 NetBSD soon to get two shiny new Seagate ATA/100 drives iBook 700/384MB X.2.4 soon to get Western Digital 120GB external -- PCI-PowerMacs is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/> and... Small Dog Electronics http://www.smalldog.com | Refurbished Drives | -- Sonnet & PowerLogix Upgrades - start at $169 | & CDRWs on Sale! | Support Low End Mac <http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html> PCI-PowerMacs list info: <http://lowendmac.com/lists/pci-powermacs.shtml> --> AOL users, remove "mailto:"; Send list messages to: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For digest mode, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subscription questions: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Archive:<http://www.mail-archive.com/pci-powermacs%40mail.maclaunch.com/> Using a Mac? Free email & more at Applelinks! http://www.applelinks.com
