Looking to Get a 500GB External Hard Drive

Hello all -

I'm looking for advice on purchasing an external hard drive. It needs to be compatible with Windows Vista (Business version). A couple of questions.

1.) Should I get one with firewire? 3 laptops (2 XP Professional, 1 Vista Business) will be using it. 2 have USB ports and one will be a new Thinkpad T61 15.4 with (I believe) IEEE 1394 Firewire. I also assume that firewire 800 is better than firewire 400.

2.) Is there a way to have all 3 laptops share the data? I believe there are a few systems that allow for remote access, but as far as I can see, they aren't compatible with Vista. Note: It doesn't need to be "access anywhere", just to be able to access it wirelessly via a home network.


Thanks


Gary

 

Once you plug an external drive into a Windows machine you can always open a network share to it. Then the other PCs mount the network share and voila, they have access to the file system. You can find many online tutorials on how to do this.

In most tests Firewire is faster than USB 2.0. But USB drives will be much more plentiful and cheaper.

If performance is a real issue you can look into external-SATA. You can get an eSATA card for your laptop and an external SATA drive enclosure, the speed will be unbeatable. But only the directly-connected PC will benefit. The wireless network speed is much slower than USB 2.0 so you may as well get a USB 2.0 drive.

Greg

 

Thanks for the advice Greg. I should mention that I did pick up a 500GB Seagate FreeAgent Pro the other day from BestBuy for 134. According to ther web site, it's Vista compatible. Just wasn't sure if I should return it and spend the extra $50+ on one with firewire. I think that I will stick with the one I have.

Gary