External HD recommendation for MBOX

[nocomedown]

Hey guys,

Need a recommendation for a portable, affordable, yet professional, external hard-drive for use with an MBOX and my 1.5ghz G4 Powerbook, 1gb RAM. I checked with the dudes at Sweetwater and they recommended two drives.

1. Glyph GT050 series starts at $259 for an 80 GB.

2. LaCie 160gb for $150.

They said the LaCie was not the best quality and that the Gylph was more reliable, quieter.

What do you guys recommend? Do I really need to spend $300 for a reliable external hd? I'm not even sure the GT050 is portable.

Thanks,

Dan

[BDWillis]

Hello Dan — I'm a BIG fan of Glyph... I own a number of their excellent products & their tech support is second to none, but I agree that price seems a little steep. I use LaCie d2 firewire drives (the stand-up ones) on a regular basis with no trouble — the LaCie drives I've seen acting up are the little "Porche" drives... they seem to have a high percentage of board problems.

If you can avoid having the drive right beside you, I'd really recommend Granite Digital www.granitedigital.com drives, specifically model #2063. It's a 120GB Firewire 400 drive for $150 (includes a 3' premium "FireVue" cable), but there are 2 tiny fans in the case which may make it too loud for your situation. These & the LaCie d2's are what we buy for "project drives" for albums we're working on.

In any case, I'd recommend buying the Granite Digital firewire cables to use in place of the cheapies that come with other drives. Hope this helps.

Warmest Regards,
Brian