[plug] Linux and External Drives

[Michael Hunt]

Hiya all,

Just wondering what people's opinions are on external USB drives as
opposed to Firewire. I recently became the owner of a digital video
camera along with a daughter (the later resulted in the former not the
other way around) and already I can see myself chewing up lots of HDD
space. Looking at office works site I see that they have quite a good
price ($199) on a Maxtor 200GB USB drive :-

http://www.officeworks.com.au/shop/catalog/sku.asp?ID=INMA200GBE&LEVEL=SK&PR=Q70&SID=1UB6CG8B7AA38G4NFJVQQQT457BFFWF0

I know I can pick up a USB/Firewire external caddy and drive from Austin
(about $90 for the caddy and anywhere from $75 to $230 depending on what
HDD I buy).

Price wise the Maxtor comes in much better per GB, but I do like the
flexibility that the combo unit would offer. (The use would mainly be
for video editing storage/backup, I have enough drive space on my
iBook/workstation for actually doing the editing. Both machines have
firewire and occasionally I may use USB to copy files onto the server
machine).

Can anyone give me info on experiences with Maxtor's external drive (is
it crap?) with Linux? Pros/cons of USB drive over firewire (everything
is USB 2.0).

Michael Hunt