French reseller Macway has begun to offer FireWire 800/USB 2.0-equipped external hard disk drives. The new ICE FW800 drives are available in capacities of 120 to 250GB.
FireWire 800 is the new high-speed peripheral interface available on Apple’s latest pro-level systems, including the 17 inch PowerBook G4 and the latest revision of the Power Mac G4 as well. Based on the IEEE 1394b specification, the interface provides twice the available bandwidth as FireWire 400, the interface found on most Macs today.
The ICE FW800 drives incorporate one FireWire 400 port, two FireWire 800 ports, and one USB 2.0 interface. Macway claims its ICE FW800 systems are capable of transfer rates up to 61MB/s and up to 54 percent better performance than their FireWire 400 predecessors. The Macway ICE FW800 drives use 7200RPM mechanisms, most of which incorporate 8MB caches.
Prices for the new ICE FW800 line run €279 to €569 depending on capacity. More details are available from the Web site, including benchmarks showing the new drives in action.