External Hard Drive Deals

I've been wanting a Western Digital MyBook for a while for backup and to put a lot of the video files I mess around with. My 80(?) GB MacBook fills up pretty quickly if I'm working on something and the MyBook pretty much looks awesome. Saw an email today from Buy.com advertising it. They also had the Fantom external hard drive, albeit for much cheaper. I read in a review that the Fantom has a WD hard drive inside. Both are 500GB, but MyBook supports USB 2.0 AND FireWire.

Although USB 2.0 has an advertised speed of 48MB/s and FireWire has a speed of 40MB/s, I've heard that on average FireWire out performs USB 2.0 because the FireWire protocol works more on a master/slave relationship, and USB operates more peer-to-peer. Basically FireWire does what it's told, while you spend time negotiating with USB. Hm.. which to get.. so much more for the MyBook, but FireWire and great looks.




MyBook



Fantom



Maybe I'll wait for a bigger sale, or get the Fantom and hide it somewhere.