Mac Forum / General / Hardware / November 2006

   Don't listen to Wegie, he's clueless about most issues.

   If you get eSATA it will be a lot faster than USB or Firewire 800. If
the adapter used either USB or Firewire, it will be a waste of time and
money. However if you can plug the adapter right into the computer via PCI
slot or a PCMCIA/CardBus/ExpressCard slot, you will get the full speed.

John

You would get the best results with an external eSATA drive, but you'd
also have to be running some version of OS X, perhaps 10.2 or above
since you'd also need a PCI card for optimum performance and to have the
connection.

For Example,

http://www.granitedigital.com/catalog/pg49_fasthostadapters.htm

That said, if you plan on moving up to a newer Mac, Firewire would be
fine for the moment, but I wouldn't plan on it for a long-term solution

I will try to put this pretty simply. You are hooking up to the
MacBookPro. You will not be able to max out these buses in a real work
situation, so any of them will do.

The drives that I use from LaCie have USB and firewire ports. Firewire
is good and reliable. If you are sticking with the Mac, firewire is
fine. Look for a drive that has USB capability, as Apple seems to be
the only big and constant supporter of firewire. USB will help "future
proof" you a bit.

If you are looking for long term compatibility, and want to try some
fancier RAID stuff down the road, eSATA is probably the way to go.

However, sticking with the Mac, which has no native eSata solution, you
are looking at going USB to eSATA to drive, or some other solution. It
could introduce a bottleneck or two.

btw: if you go with a USB external drive, chances are, it is still a
SATA drive inside anyway.

No.