Buy a desktop or a laptop?

[JStrickPhoto]

Mick, removable hard drives will plug into a laptop just as easily as a desk top. And these days they have 1 Terrabyte drives that are not much bigger, if that, than a deck of cards.

If performance or throughput is an issue though, be careful what you pick out for external drives. USB stinks for data transfer. FireWire 400 is OK. FireWire 800 is better. Best though, eSata. Some of the newer laptops/desktops have an external eSata port.

Rather than spending money on external drives, where you pay extra for a fancy enclosure and power supply, I bought a drive dock:

NewerTech Voyager Q- Quad Interface SATA 2.... (FWU2ES2HDK) at OWC

This allows you to buy standard eSata internal disks for external use. A 1TB internal drive is a fraction of the cost of a decent 1TB external drive. And, you don't need the fancy power supply or case. I bought the drive dock and 2 x 1TB eSata drives for under $200 after Christmas to add to my redundant backup arsenal (I shoot about 300-400GB per year digitally).

The nice thing with this particular dock is it supports USB2.0/FW400/FW800 and eSata. So, I bought an eSata card for my desktop to ensure fastest possible data transfer speeds.

Jamie

[catrancher]

NewerTech Voyager Q- Quad Interface SATA 2.... (FWU2ES2HDK) at OWC

Jamie,

I've got a couple of those too but the ones that I have don't look like a toaster!

That's hysterical!

Tom (... you'll like the Intel!)

[JStrickPhoto]

Do share, Tom. Curious to see what other docks are out there.

[catrancher]

Actually, mine is more like a hot swappable external enclosure. Slide out tray that holds the drive. Don't know who made it. The label is long since gone. Similar to this.

Tom (... on a clear disk, you can seek forever!)

[JStrickPhoto]

Oh sure - kinda like a raid enclosure that's just not in raid configuration.

[uscwest]

OK Tom and Jamie, my desktop went belly up several weeks ago. I think it is as simple as getting a new power pack but if I were to buy one of these could I take the hard drive out of my desk top and plug it into this and get it to work?

Oh and what does one of these eSata slots look like on the laptop?

[josh.p.]

I would personally go with the higher end mac laptops. I do graphics (for this forum and for my own website) and I can cope with the 13" screen on my macbook. My iMac was a 24" one and was perfect but this just gets me by with this screen size, I do wish I'd got a 17" mac book pro now.

If you just do the odd bit of photo editing or video processing, then a white macbook would be ideal Remember if you are a lecturer, student or work in education you get a pretty hefty discount, often meaning you can get the higher-end laptops for not a lot more than the lower end ones

[Keith]

I do wish I'd got a 17" mac book pro now.

Thats really interesting! So if you did it again, you'd trade a larger screen against portability?

It's something I've often pondered myself. 15"ish always seems like a good compromise but then I see a 17" screen and think wow

[josh.p.]

Thats really interesting! So if you did it again, you'd trade a larger screen against portability?

It's something I've often pondered myself. 15"ish always seems like a good compromise but then I see a 17" screen and think wow

In all honesty I don't think the difference between 15" and 17" would be enough for me to notice the difference in portability I forgot they did a 15" version though so would probably go with that for affordability reasons

[JStrickPhoto]

Oh and what does one of these eSata slots look like on the laptop?

Looks like this: