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Test Drive: External Drive Connections, Part 1

Feb 11, 2008 12:00 PM, By Jan Ozer

           

Table 2. Costs of drives and adapter cards.
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Drive and Adapter Costs

The interesting trend is that prices for drives with FireWire 800/eSATA or both are already starting to drop to USB 2.0/FireWire 400 levels. With smaller drives in the 250GB range, there’s only a $20 difference between USB 2.0-only drives and the miniStack v3 drive, which supports all four standards.

For larger drives, I checked LaCie’s website, and I found a 1TB eSATA/USB 2.0 drive for only $10 more than a USB 2.0-only drive. If you want a LaCie drive with all four major interfaces, you’ll pay $529 vs. $379, although NewerTech sells a 1TB version of its miniStack v3 drive with all four interfaces for $429.99.

If your notebook or desktop computers don’t have the necessary connectors, you can find adapters for FireWire 800 for less than $100, with eSATA for less than $50. I’m sure prices are dropping rapidly in this market, so check each company’s website for updated pricing, or check with your favorite reseller.

In the next segment, I'll lay out performance and other findings relating to these drives. Now that you know that the costs aren’t excessive, I think you’ll be convinced that both eSATA or FireWire 800 can deliver a highly responsive editing experience.

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