I need to buy an external hard drive

Okay, as the title should already have implied, this is going to be a very technical piece of writing. So cover your eyes now if you still cannot tell the difference between a 'hard drive' and a 'hard on'. Well, in all fairness, 'hard drive' can be interpreted for something else other than a storage device. But that would be out of the scope of our discussion today.

As you all know, I am not a geeky person so I suck when it comes to fiddling with my computer. That is actually one of the prime reasons why I got a Mac in the first place after years of despairing before error messages on a Windows machine. Since I have touched on the Mac v.s. Windows topic, I might as well take the opportunity to extol the virtues of the Mac system. Did I just say 'extol the virtues'? Eww that is so cliche! Okay anyway, here are the reasons why Mac rocks the world:

1. They are incredibly stable. My system only crashed like 4-5 times in the last 2 years.

2. 99.9% virus-free. Though it is debatable whether it is a result of good virus protection or because no one (here I mean hackers) cares about the Mac enough to want to infect them with viruses. Either way, it is a good thing.

3. Aesthetically appealing.

4. It is cool to carry them around. They are the centers of attraction at Starbucks, Coffee Bean or even Burger King. But then again, being spotted at Burger King is not exactly very cool, is it?

I could go on to name another hundred reasons except that now I cannot think of any more outside of the four already listed.

Anyway, back to the hard drive issue.

Everytime I want to buy some technie stuff, I will scour the internet for reviews. And here are the things that I have learned so far:

* a note of caution for the real geeks: DO NOT read the following because you will probably laugh your ass off

1. When you are running the programmes, you do not just use the RAM but you will also be needing hard drive space. And from what I have read, a Powerbook needs about 5 GB of hard drive space (can be up to 8 GB at times) when running the programmes. So if your hard drive is bursting at the seams, you will probably notice that your system lags a little or that the execution gets a little choppy. And you also see the rotating hour-glass more often which means it is taking your system a lot longer to load the programmes than it would normally take when it has more free storage space.

2. There is the Firewire 400 and the Firewire 800, the latter having double (theoretically) the transfer speed (read/write) than the former. For those who do not know yet, Firewire is something like the USB but is more commonly seen in Mac machines than Windows based machines. There are some hard drives that offer all the three connectivity options but even if they do, there are catches. For some hard drive, like the Iomega External Hard Drive FireWire 800/FireWire 400/USB (black series), though it offers both Firewire options, it does not actually come with a Firewire 400 cable. That essentially means for people like me, I would have to get a Firewire 400 adapter in order to use the hard drive because my Mac (being more than 2 years old now), only has the Firewire 400 port and I think Firewire ports are not backward compatible. They are other hard drives which offer fast Firewire speed but disastrously slow USB speed. Though that will not really be a problem for me.

3. There is the 'portable' version against the 'desktop' version. The former is a plug-and-play type that does not require shutting down before disconnecting and does not have so many wires and also, of course, much lighter and therefore 'portable'. The latter, however, offers a bigger capacity.

4. The potential buyer should also pay attention to whether the hard drive drains a lot of power (in which case it would be useful if it comes with its own adapter). But then again, if you still need to plug in the hard drive's adapter, will it not be a lot easier if you just bring along the Mac's adaptor so that you will not be needing two adaptors? There is also the noise factor that one needs to worry about. Of course, and heat dissipation as well.

5. Even if the editors of the websites rate something as 'very good', it does not mean that it will definitely be a good buy. Some which won the Editor's Choice Awards do not live up to their expection as can be seen from the reviews written by the users. One example would be the LaCie F.A. Porsche External Hard Drive. Many users, both on the Apple website and Cnet website, cite durability as their main grouch against the device. Many see theirs break down within the first 2 weeks. So definitely not a brand that I want to consider.

The fact is, after surfing the net for almost 3 hours, I still have absolutely not the faintest idea which hard drive I should get. Maybe I will pop down to Funan Mall before my Spanish class this friday. Maybe I will get the salespersons to recommend me one. Not that I totally trust them or anything. But do I have an option?

Actually you might be wondering why do I need an external hard drive at all? Erm because I only have around 5 GB of hard drive space left and I want to download movies and TV shows? Not exactly a good reason to spend money but if I can find something between $200-300 then I will probably not be considered 'over-liberal' with my mother's money, will I? I thought so too.