Advice on UK-sourced 3.5" SATA enclosure w/ FireWire400

Hi,
Following a breakdown and a miserable experience with Pixmania, I'm currently desperately seeking a SATA enclosure for a 3.5" SATA drive, and it must have a FireWire 400 port (actually two, so it can be daisy-chained if necessary).
Macally are too expensive, and Wiebetech don't seem to have a good supplier in the UK. OWC (www.otherworldcomputing.com) offer a good range at reasonable prices, but purchasing outwith the EU carries risks, as I'm not covered by Distance Selling regulations.
I'm not interested in USB2.0 as I don't want to suffer the loss of speed inherent in the product when the bandwidth is shared, and besides, you can't boot from USB2.0 on an iBook G4 (at least, not without a hack I'm unwilling to perform).
I'd like to spend £40, and at that price it'd be nice if the enclosure was fanless.
I have tried many High Street (local Apple Reseller etc.) and online retailers (Pixmania - boo hiss; eBuyer; Dabs.com; StorageDepot - they only carry the same model as just broke on me, although under a different label; etc.) and had no luck.
Any advice on procuring this item in the UK or, at a pinch, the EU, would be much welcomed.
Thanks,
SiR G.

Hmmmm!
OK, have you tried these?
http://www.shop21.uk.com/en-gb/dept_30.html
http://www.microdirect.co.uk/productlister.aspx?n=2,13&n=65&source=AffiliateWind ow
http://eshop.macsales.com/Search/Search.cfm?Criteria=sata%20hd%20kit&title=Exter nal%20Serial%20ATA%20Enclosure%20Kits&source=googlesata31707&sort=a&&gclid=CJ22Zv7YsCFRcoZwodE19GRQ
http://www.macheaven.co.uk/?page=proddetail&prod=21832
http://www.storagedepot.co.uk/Products.aspx?action=showproduct&id=309&type=41
http://www.specialtech.co.uk/spshop/catalog/category60_Hard_Drive_Enclosures_page1.html
http://www.2ndchancepc.co.uk/ex-hdd.html?sub_cat=729
Information on ATA6:
http://www.computerhope.com/help/ide.htm#02
SATA:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_ATA
OK?!

Similar Messages

I have taken my 750GB HD out of my 17" MacBook Pro and put it into a 2.5" USB to SATA enclosure but can't get it to open up on my new 11" MacBook Air. Any ideas please.

I have taken my 750GB HD out of my 17" MacBook Pro and put it into a 2.5" USB to SATA enclosure but can't get it to open up on my new 11" MacBook Air. Any ideas please.

Have you installed the recent update?
There are some issues with Apple USB 3.0 ports and some devices.

Water and Imacs, ATA vs SATA, enclosures

I have a flat panel G4 into which water has leaked from the apartment above me, and now it won't start up. It was turned off at the time, and I've left it a few days to dry out but no luck so I guess that major damage has been done internally.
I really need to save the data, so rather than paying someone a huge amount of money to do so, and following a bit of research, I am thinking about trying to remove the hard-drive and put it in a new enclosure myself.
My questions:
1. Is the hard disk itself likely to have been damaged by the water?
2. Most of the USB/Firewire enclosures I have seen advertised are for SATA drives - but the flat panel Imacs are ATA, right? So would an Ultra ATA drive work in a SATA enclosure? Or do I need to look for a specific ATA enclosure?
3. Anyone have any recommended manufacturers for mac drives, or are they much of a muchness?
4. How easy is it to get the drive out of the flat-panels? Is this something I could do myself, or would it be best left to a tech?
Many thanks for any help the forum can offer.
G4 Imac Flat Panel 15" Mac OS X (10.3.9)

Hello and Welcome to Apple Discussions.
Sorry to hear about the damage.
1. The hard drive is located above the optical drive so even if the base was sat in a pool of water it's quite high up. However it is located directly under the fan openings around the chrome neck so if water went in that way you may have less chance. That said there is a white plastic wrapper on the top of the hard disk under the fan. Whether any shorting occurred that may have damaged the drive we won't know until you get it in an enclosure.
2. Actually my experience is the opposite, ATA enclosures are more common in the places I've looked; you do need an ATA enclosure and not an SATA one. Here's one example, it's not great but it's cheap for this one off task. If you plan on using the enclosure more often this one is a far better item (link) even once you factor in VAT and shipping.
3. Depending in what context. An internal hard drive is an internal hard drive. If you are looking at an external hard drive then the type of chipset used is important too.
4. iMac G4s are difficult to work in but you have the luxury of not having to worry too much about keeping the machine working. The following paragraphs are a cut-and-paste from an earlier post of mine.
<hr width="200">
It's pretty fiddly to work inside an iMac G4 so you must be cautious. Always take anti-static precautions. Here are three options for guiding you through the procedure:
MacWorld
xlr8yourmac
Service Manuals
I've also taken a fair few photos which you can find here.
I'd advise reading the reports on the xlr8yourmac drive database (link) to get other people's experiences first.
You must replace the Thermal Paste when you close the iMac up or it will overheat.
It's probably worth replacing the PRAM Battery whilst you're in there as these have a finite life (once they fail to re-charge you may start to run in to snags - it's only a £5.50 item).
<hr width="200">
Hope that helps some
mrtotes

2 or 3 disc sata enclosures?

Hi,
(sigh) the search for the above has been exhausting to say the least after searching these boards and doing research, i purchased a sonnet tech pci-x 4 port esata card, a 500 GB maxtor HD and i placed an order through a local reseller for a fusion 400 from Sonnet. This was just after the release of the Fusion 500. my reseller tells me that the order went through (haven't been charged yet thank God) and Sonnet's website showed that the fusion 400 shipped the same day. this was a few weeks ago. i bought through the reseller instead of direct b/c the reseller could absorb the duty charges (i live in Canada).
So, this was 2.5 weeks ago. the reseller had said it would get to them by this tuesday, then to me by today. i called the reseller yesterday for tracking numbers...now he says Sonnet's no longer selling the 400s and they are only fulfilling existing orders. The status of my order is unknown right now. i would buy a 500, but i really don't need Port multiplying; it's more expensive and i would need a new card, which is also more expensive.
So, i'm searching once again.
I've decided that a 2 or 3 disc array would be great. 4 or 5 bay would be awesome, but more expensive.
it would have to be:
- sata 1 or 2; 3.0 or lower GBps
- preferably directly connected to the hd tray so there is no need for secondary cables
- maybe a temperature gauge?
- quiet would be preferable
Macsales has a 2 bay gadget, but it doesn't use the 3.0 GBps speed. i do heavy video transfer/editing/dvd work so the more speed, the better.
i find addonics website confusing to know what to order and as of right now, their store will not come up, which is a bit scary.
thanks in advance. i'm a bit bummed as I have the card and HD...just no way to get 'er going Oh, and a pile of work which could be done faster if i had a solution
Cheers,
Keeber

Hi,
When choosing a SATA enclosure you have to decide what is most important to you. Acoustics or heat? The very quiet enclosures usually run warmer than the very cool enclosures.
It sounds like you have a Sonnet Tempo 4+4 card. With that card you can consider both internal and external mounting options on a PowerMac G5 with PCI-X.
Internal
The best internal mounting I have is the G5 Bracket. It can mount up to three drives internally. I find that using two drives in front of the CPU fan does not increase the temperature of the G5 significantly. You can see an AMUG review of this $59 internal mounting option here:
http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/articles/g5bracket/
This is an inexpensive way to add a few SATA hard drives internally with a Tempo 4+4.
External
External SATA enclosure options fall into two camps.
1. Hot swap drive tray enclosures that make it very easy to remove and replace SATA hard drives.
2. Enclosures that do not use trays and require you to unscrew the drive from the enclosure mounting brackets in order to replace or use a different SATA hard drive.
1EN2 $169.95
The FirmTek 1EN2 $169.95 is a quiet two bay SATA enclosure that meets most new SATA users needs. It is small - about the size of two drives and is very quiet. It has external SATA "Type L" connectors which are the original SATA style. Sonnet 4+4 cards use an eSATA connection which is a "Type I" connector. You would need to ask FirmTek if they can substitute the normal cables with SATA -> eSATA cables so that it will connect properly to your card. The 1EN2 dual SATA enclosure is a great solution.
Addonics Storage Tower $139.99
Another low cost favorite of mine is the Addonics Storage Tower with 6 eSATA ports for $139.99. It is model ST6ESA. The nice thing about the Storage Tower is that you can start out cheap and mount drives directly in it using up to four 5 1/4" drive bay mounting brackets for 3.5" hard drive. These are model AAHDMK53 at $3.50 each. For $14 in brackets and $140 for the case you can mount up to four drives. However, the best thing about the Storage Tower is that you can upgrade it to a hot swap enclosure later using the Disk Array 3SA or 4SA drive cages. I set one of these up and it is totally awesome. It costs $140 for the Storage Tower model ST6ESA and two 3SA units cost me $90 each. For $320, I can mount up to six hard drives. I have not found another six bay unit anywhere near this price. I also needed cables at $20 each (model AAESATA100C). You can see a review of this setup at:
http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/articles/addonics/3sa/
You can see a review of the Storage Tower options here:
http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/articles/addonics/tower/
With the Storage Tower you can add hot swap trays or a port multiplier and switch between the setups you want to use. It is the most flexible SATA enclosure construction set I have ever used and its priced right.
TrayDock eSATA $449
If you want a four bay enclosure with hot swap trays and the ability to keep your hard drives cooler than any other enclosure I have tried you should look at the WiebeTech TrayDock eSATA. It keeps drives at 101 degrees or less even after 90 minutes of constant hard work. No other enclosure I have tested can do this. However, it is not quiet. See the AMUG review for the details. This would be my first choice for 24 hour a day operation.
http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/articles/wiebetech/esata/
FirmTek SeriTek/2eEN4 eSATA 4 Bay Enclosure $499.95
If you want a very quiet 4 bay hot swap enclosure the 2eEN4 is a small quiet enclosure at a nice price. It works well and is quieter than any other 4 bay enclosure I have tested. While it keeps drives within the manufacturers environmental parameters the hard drives run considerably warmer under heavy activity than when mounted in the TrayDock eSATA.
Using a PC case
I have looked at the possibility of using a PC case but they are so large and take up so much more room than a Addonics Storage Tower that can hold 6 drives. In addition, if you want hot swap you still have to buy the drive cages as PC cases do not come with them for free. Once you put 8 drives in a PC case and try to move it you will understand why a 6 bay Storage Tower is easier to move and takes up a lot less space. I am still looking at various drive ideas but I have not found a PC case yet that looks great next to a G5. There may be some other options coming soon though. I have seen 12 bay SATA rack units that are coming down in price. I would much rather have one of them than a PC when their prices drop to under $500.
I hope this information helps,
Michael
==========

LG Blu ray Burner in sata Enclosure

Hi , I have bought an LG H20N blu ray burner and fitted it into a sata enclosure in the hope that i could run it using the sonnet SATA cards i have in 2 of my macs.
Unfortunately no joy, the finder doesn't recognise ot and nor does toast
does anyone have any ideas ?
al

Hi and welcome to Discussions,
OSX and thus Disk Utility does not support burning of Blueray discs at the moment.
To my knowledge only Toast with the Blueray plugin can burn Blueray discs.
Regards
Stefan

Using a multi-drive SATA enclosure on a Mac with just Firewire?

I currently have four external hard drive enclosures, loaded up with 14 500GB drives. The current 1TB+ drives only seem to come as SATA drives, so I need to migrate to SATA enclosures that hook up via Firewire.
The problem is, such cases don't seem to exist at comparable prices. I was able to get four-drive IDE to Firewire enclosures for under $200, and they are much much more to get similar SATA drive enclosures.
USB is an option, and cheaper, but USB takes more CPU time and is slower than Firewire, and that's a showstopper for video work. THe data copy I did last night via Firewire took 9 hours... I can't imagine stepping back to USB 2.0 (and yes, it's an old debate, but benchmarks show USB 2.0 is slower even if is supposedly faster on paper).
I have searched all over for Firewire to SATA adapters, and so far have found only two types:
FirmTek SeriTek/SpyderHUB - $120
http://www.firmtek.com/seritek/seritek-spyder/
Input USB or Firewire, and outputs two SATA ports. But, it does not support "Port Multiplier" cases, so you really can only hook up two seperate SATA drives to it. No good.
The other is from COOL DRIVES, with a $30 model and a $60 model:
http://www.cooldrives.com/sata-to-firewire-usb-mini-converter.html
The $30 model (above) is a USB or Firewire to SATA, period. The $60 model adds a Firewire pass through:
http://cooldrives.stores.yahoo.net/satofimiad2x.html
The $60 model claims to support up to 1000GB (1TB) drives, and the $30 says only 500GB, so neither is good if I plan to move to 1.5TB drives.
So my goal is to be able to buy a multi-SATA drive enclosure, and plug it up to Firewire. The problem is price. A 4-bay SATA-Firewire enclosure is much, much more than the same model that is USB/SATA. For instance:
2-drive SATA to Firewire/USB - $161
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816215067
2-drive SATA to USB - $119
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816215056
So $30 more lets me buy a four drive firewire/IDE enclosure. SATA/IDE converters for each drive (to use my existing case) can be $16 each, so that's not really an option with 14 drives either.
So my thought is -- buy a cheap multi-drive modern SATA enclosure, then use a Firewire to SATA adapter -- way cheaper than the other solutions.
I can't be the only one who has wanted to do this, but no one seems to know if it works (including the companies selling the stuff).
Anyone done it?

An update of my experimentation:
http://web.me.com/allenhuffman/Appleause/Home/Entries/2009/1/17FireWire_to_SATA_adapters_for_theMac.html
CoolDrives device does not support Port Multiplier enclosures, so it can only address one hard drive at a time. Bummer.
If anyone would come out with a FireWire 800 to eSATA (with Port Multiplier support), it would be a fantastic solution to this.

Why is my SATA enclosure not working?

I have just fitted the hard drive from my Macbook Pro (which recently died after logic board issues) into a SATA USB enclosure to transfer all the data over to my brand new iMac.
After connecting the enclosure to the iMac, the red LED on the front of the enclosure is blinking and I can hear the hard drive working but my iMac doesn't seem to have found it. There is no external drive icon on the the desktop and nothing showing up in Disk Utilities.
The instructions state: Red light = HD is being accessed Green light = HDD is connected and hard disk is idle.
There is no green light showing at all.
As far as I'm aware, there is no problem with the hard drive itself.
The instructions also refer to Driver Installation but only for Windows computers, although I checked the enclosure was compatible with Macs before I bought it.
I've tried connecting it to my wife's PC laptop and a message appears saying something like unrecognisable/malfunctioning USB device.
Any clues? I'm literally going mad! I really need to get that stuff off that hard drive!

A couple of thoughts come to mind.
-A bad enclosure or improper HD installation.
-Insufficient power to run the drive on USB alone.
-HD actually has some problem you don't realize.
It is difficult to troubleshoot without alternative hardware. I use a powered SATA dock to test raw drives. Some enclosures allow applying external power.

ThinkServer HDD SATA enclosure/adaptor

I have 3 ThinkServers RS110 6438 14G and i want to plug a secondary HDD. I searched at my provider, lenovo spain and ibm spain but there’s no way to find a HDD enclosure/adaptor SATA for this Server. There’s a number in this piece (42R4131 587282) but it seems isn’t a product number. If anyone can help me to find it would be great
I attached the Picture bellow:
Picture
Thanks a lot
Xevi
Message Edited by PCX on 05-20-2009 06:29 PM
Solved!
Go to Solution.

welcome to the forum!
42R4131 is the replacement part number for the tray itself without a HDD. search google for this number and you will find many resellers who carry this part.
(edit: typo)
Message Edited by erik on 05-20-2009 01:03 PM
ThinkStation C20
ThinkPad X1C · X220 · X60T · s30 · 600

Need Expert advice on choosing Source System for creating/maint Customers.

Hi Experts,
Iam on project where we have CRM,ECC(SD),FICA in the System Landscape.The client is currently using ECC(SD) Customer master for creating/maintainig Customer's.As we have CRM & FICA in this implementation, we are planning to propose that we use CRM as the source system for creating/maintaing Customers as Business Partners & Perform standard replication to the other system's in the landscape.
The client has has asked us to confirm if having CRM as the source is the Best practice in the industry when we have this three systems (CRM,FICA,ECC(SD)) Landscape.I thought to get some expert advice on this & see if any of you have a similar project experience & share some views on this CRM BP vs ECC(SD) Customer Master.
Thanks in advance!
Regards,
Naveen

Hi,
I believe it depends on your business senario.Here I can share some my experience for you.
CRM As Source System
Advantage:
1) Choosing CRM as source system ,you can create several roles of customer for tracking the presales process of customer，such as prospect ,sold to party ,customers ,also you can define the life cycle of your customer and control which life cycle of customer should be replicated to ECC and which one should not.
2) CRM can have more views of customer and customer defined field (EEWB fields) ,so if you choose CRM as Source it will be more convenient to create and fill in the all your user defined field .In other words ,choosing ECC as source you have to extend these field again in CRM .
3） easy to maintain customer relationship
Disadvantages：
1） Have to extend Company code view of Customer data, since CRM do not have these view ,it is just used for billing and integration with financial accounts.
2） have to extend some particular partner function of customer ,it is because of CRM it is only possible to create part of partner function automatically like SP ,BP when business partner is replicating to ECC.
ECC As the source
Oppositely， if you choose ECC as the source ,the advantage become disadvantage.
Advantage :
1) Can Easily to create customer's data of company code view
2) Can easily to assign any partner function to customer
To conclude， if you only need to create sales order in ECC ，I believe choosing ECC as Lead system is better, since you do not have to extend customer data and easily to integrate with FICO and SD.Howerver, if you are going to create a sales order from opportunity or quotation ,CRM is your best choice.
Regards ,Edward

2.5" SATA enclosure for Macbook's stock HD?

My macbook's HD died last week. it's being repaired at apple's repair depot and i was told that they were going to need another week to do the work even a dummy user like me can finish within 1 hour: replace it and put the OSX back on.
So i figured this is a great chance for me to upgrade the HD and install the new one they are going to give me into an enclosure as an external backup HD. So next time if the HD breaks down again I also won't need to experience a few weeks without a computer. Has anyone done this? Any suggestions of which enclosure to get (low price preferred:)) would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance.

Excellent observations Paul, and I don't disagree
with you much. I felt compelled to respond a little
further. I consider myself to be a longtime Windows
expert. I have my own business where I build and
repair Windows computers. When I saw the plans for
Vista I realized Microsoft was going nowhere and
decided to make the switch. I made this switch based
on the information I get from podcasts mainly. I
listen to Leo Laporte, Maccast, and others who had
convinced me that Mac was the way to go. Like you
said in your post... "with windows, there are so many
glitches, intrusions and threats.
Here is my Mac experience, in detail, from purchase
to today:
1: Cannot print to either one of my printers. I
have a brother HL-2070N Laser network printer
connected to my D-Link DGL-4300 gigabit router and an
HP PSC1510 All-in One. I have tried everything.
Drivers, software, add printer panel, share windows
printer, you name it. Mac OSX sees it and when I
print nothing happens! I boot into Windows with
bootcamp and print away on my blackbook under
windows. Windows simply sees my shared HP and my
network printer.
My HP 4050 Color laserjet works just great connected to either my Airport Base Station OR my Airport Express. I use the USB cable, no muss no fuss. Using Bonjour (or whatever it's called now) you open the printer prefs, click the "+" to add a printer and its right there. Perhaps there's a problem with your D-Link "GameFuel" router. Yes, yes I know your Windows computers (even the MacBook in Windows mode works fine with it... okay.... my Apple Airport Extreme units work great with all my Mac's)
2: As I mentioned in a previous post. I lost my
wireless connection last night and booted into
windows where it worked fine. Thought I had it
fixed, however, when I got home today - same thing!
My wirless indicator is flashing on and off and my
CPU is at 76%. When I turn off the wireless CPU
goes to normal.
You already identified the problem and it sounds like an "Archive and Install" of OS X would fix it.
3: Luckily I do not have the RSD issue, however,
when I first got it home it did the RSD for 6 or 7
minutes upon first boot. I hit the power button,
screen would light up and then just cut off. When I
finally got into MAC OS, I did the SMC firmware
upgrade and the issue has not returned (fingers
crossed).
4: As I sit here with my blackbook on my lap, my
legs are burning up, I am sweating and the palms of
my hands hurt. I am hard wired into my router
because my wireless does not work. Luckily I know
how to make ethernet connections and made a 100ft
cable so I could sit in front of the TV while I type
this out. What would a regular consumer do. I have
the tools, connectors, and wire for my business. I
geuss I am lucky?
That SUXS, clearly a problem. None of my MacBook's (all three of them) have ever overheated like that. Never, not once. I'm not discrediting your problem I too am posting for others reading the forum.
5: I am a huge gamer. I have purchased pretty much
every game title that has come to market in the last
5 years. I built my own gaming rig in addition to
the other computers I have at the house and I enjoy
the game experience as much time will allow. Should
I go into detail about the MAC OSX gaming experience.
Don't get me wrong, I knew about this before I made
the switch. The games are simply too few and way
too late to market on the Mac side. This is well
known and simply a market forces issue. I
understand this.
And this is a problem how??? You were already aware of the gaming status before you purchased your first Mac but clearly this IS a problem for you as you felt compeled to mention it.
I'll post my comments; I love the games that I play on all my Mac's. They continue to work and perform and exceed my expectations.
6: I upgraded to iTunes yesterday. Where is my
music? I lost everything. There are question marks
on all my titles. A search of the internet found
that many, many people are having the same issue. It
even made the front page of Digg.
I too upgraded my iTunes and didn't loose any of my songs. I hope you have corrected the problem.
6A: I play movies, videos, podcasts, and the like on
all my computers all the time. On about half of all
my old videos the video is now out of sync with the
voice and the video is choppy and warped. These
movies and videos played fine on computer just on
Tuesday, what happened. I noticed that the famed Wil
Wheaton had his music replaced after his story hit
the front page of Digg (after several phone calls to
Apple Support). I didn't work on Star Trek, does
that mean I don't get my music back?
????? I don't know what to say.... as afar as old (PC) videos, are we talking pron or are they important videos that you'd like to fix and convert to a suitable format?
Sidenote: I had to download VLC Player just to get
my videos up and running on my MAC. Windows has an
auto codec download feature so that I don't have to
worry about it. By the way, When I rip DVD's in the
MP4 format on my PC and transfer them to my MAC they
don't play.
See above comment.
Paul, I could go further. My hands are hot, my legs
are killing me and just just put $2500.00 into a
laptop that Apple says is a notebook because I should
not use it on my lap. I have a 1.8GHZ Thinkpad for
work and I need to switch over to it now so that I
can get some work done. By the way, those stickers
that Apple puts in the box of all there products - I
put one on my Thinkpad so everybody would comment and
I could launch into my new found MAC religion. I
have to say that I am having second thoughts.
You are 100% corect, your MacBook should NOT overheat your lap but not ALL MacBook's do that. I'll restate that our three MacBook's do not, nor have they ever gotten so hot we couldn't use them on our laps.
I hope that you respond. Very interested in what you
have to say about my MAC experience.
BTW, to date, I have never gotten a virus in my life!
I have had spyware I must admit. Once I learned
what not to do the issue was over.
That's cool, I have had many people send me email virus' even after I switched to a Mac (about 8 years ago).
Somebody mentioned to me that the Apple forums are
like a hospital...you only see the the posts when
people have issues.
Yes that seems to make sense.
Could that also be the case with
Windows? You only hear about the bad things from
people who don't have a clue how to protect
themselves?
When are there "good" things happening on a Windows computer, no seriously, tell me about them. I can give you an earful about how lame my Dell PC and laptop are.
Mac on man! I will still be fully converted at home
in a few months when I replace my custom built dual
core AMD with a Mac Pro!
Way cool - people on these forums are here to help.
Greg
PS Leo rocks!

Good Source for SATA HDD enclosures?

I am looking for a good source for hard drive enclosures for my MB Pro hard drive. I have upgraded mine, and I want to have access to my old one?

I've never bought one myself, but I have heard Other World Computing recommended. You probably would want to look at a firewire SATA with the Oxford 11+ chipset (I'm not sure of the chipset number--it could be higher). With the firewire enclosure, I think you can also make a bootable clone for your Mac. Hopefully you will get recommendations of what to buy as well as where to buy. But OWC is a good place to start.
Good luck!

SATA HDD Enclosure

I have just purchased a SATA HDD enclosure for my 1TB WD drive (it was an external drive but i ripped the USB connections off the pads) so that I can use it. However, after purchasing it I noted on the description that all the system requrements were all Windows and it doesnt mention Mac. I am waiting for it to be delivered but just wondered if there was actually any drivers for them or if they were plug and play?
Any advice would be great. Thanks

External HDD enclosures are generic. It should be compatible with your MBP. Install the WD HDD (assuming it is Mac formatted) in the enclosure and it should be recognized by the MBP.
Ciao.

HELP ! Two SATA drives in an external enclosure RAID ZERO. Need data recovery.

What a nightmare !     My neighbor died from esophageal cancer and the funeral is in one week. He left behind a G5 2.5 DP tower with a dead motherboard, and he put the two 640 GB SATA drives in an Other World Computing external enclosure Mercury Elite Pro Dual) weeks before he expired. He got access to these drives in this enclosure. (External RAIDs are a no-no).
His grieving wife wants pictures extracted from the drives. There is no known back up and the G5 tower cannot be found.
When connecting the external enclosure by FW800 or USB3, the need to format flag pops up. Disk Utility shows one 1400 GB drive "unformatted".    The DIP switches on the enclosure are set to RAID 0.   Several data recovery programs find files, but of course any jpg over 50kb looks like venetian blinds, Tried Data Rescue 3, and the drive depicted as 1280 GB does not divide using expert features and the command key, thus a RAID SET for emulation cannot be formed. See here: See here: http://www.prosofteng.com/blog/recovering-data-from-a-apple-raid-using-data-resc ue-3-by-prosoft-engineering-2/
What to do now to recover jpg's intact and ASAP ?
1. Try another enclosure ?
2. Insert these drives into my personal G5 tower ?
3. Try different data recovery software ?
4. Which software other than Data Rescue will recover from two drives in one external enclosure believed to be RAID ZERO ?
Thank you.

Yes, if and when the tower can be located and retrieved.   In one communication it was described as a G4, in another, a G5.
Turns out that a single external drive was found, so suspect that is the boot drive. In the mean time, am doing an emulated recovery (two sets) using two converter boxes to isolate the two SATA drives, assuming RAID 0 and 32kb striped,   The two sets and because the drive order is unknown.   The first recovery is almost completed.
BTW, OWC rep stated that the two drives cannot be read in their dual SATA enclosure. The rep stated that the drives would have to be reformatted while in thier enclosure, then use. Tried two enclosures to see if they would read the drives independently, and one brand had a silly interface.   One has to put in two "dummy drives" (or ones in which the data is not important) and then convert the electronics (reset switch + power button) to RAID 0.

LSI SAS3442X-R SAS/SATA HBA Card and an external enclosure.

There are many Sun Systems that only have two drive bays, so expanding internally really isn't an option. However, if you are willing to think outside the box, you have more options.
I found a SAS/SATA card by LSI that supports Solaris SPARC. It has internal and external connectors. It is not cheap. The cheapest I have found was about 212. I believe it is the 8-port version (SAS1068) of the adapter that is built in to the T2000. (SAS1064)
Right now, I am thinking about getting that card and an external SATA enclosure which will hold around 4 drives. SATA drives are relatively cheap, so a workable solution would be to get a pair and mirror them.
BTW, I am a probably upgrading to a Sun Blade 2000. It would be kind of pointless to spend more on storage than a Blade 100 is worth.
http://www.lsilogic.com/storage_home/products_home/host_bus_adapters/sas_hbas/lsisas3442xr/index.html

This card is not an option on your Sun Blade 100 anyway - it's a 3.3V only card & is keyed so that it won't fit in the Sun Blade PCI slot. Ask me how I know :-)
The thing is that in the Sun Systems Handbook the PCI slots on the Sun Blade 100 and 150 are listed as 3.3v/5v and 32/64 bit. So, looking that the specs it seems like it is supposed to work. However, looking more closely at the docs, the PCI riser card FRU part description states "The PCI signaling is 5V, 32Bits, 33MHz".
If I knew that the signalling was both 3.3v and 5v I'd probably remove the PCI key. However, if it's really 5v I'd just likely destroy my LSI card :-S
I wanted very badly to get an external enclosure for some more storage on my 100 and it looks like I'm about out of options (firewire panics the kernel from time to time under heavy I/O). I'm thinking of finally dumping my SPARC gear and moving over to x86 out of frustration.. I would be SPARCless for the first time in 15 years.

External SATA recommendations

All,
Can anyone recommend an external SATA solution for my Powermac G5? I have a card with external ports, but I need advice on the following:
1. Decent enclosure that will allow spindown of disks
2. Cables
3. Disks
The other option would be for a NAS solution, but I don't believe that would be suitable for photography or video editing, but I guess it would be ok for archival storage ?
I'm preferably looking for gear available in the UK and known to work with the G5... Ever since finding out that a WD400GB disk was going to cost me an additional SATA controller, I've been a lot more cautious about this kind of thing

Wayne,
Your shopping in the same area i have been exploring recently. I'm looking for much more storage, possible with RAID AND backup options. I use Aperture extensively - as extensively as the hopeless and unapgradeable 6600 nVida video card allows. I also have a large itunes collection and do video creation on FC. I need more spindles!
I've settled on the Sonnet E4p PCIe card for my quad offering 4 external SATA ports, and it also support Port Multiplication (PM). PM is a means of clustering bunches of drives physically and connect them to one eSATA port. This particular card £200, supports up to x5 SATA drives per port, thus 20 external drives. However PM is slightly slower than direct connect to each drive. My view is that PM, possibly with RAID within it will be fast enough AND give me a backup option.
After the I/O card there is the choice of enclosure. I have done a lot of reading on what is out there and again i'm falling back to one of two Sonnet products, the 400A and 500P. The former offers x4 SATA drives and supports direct connect to each drive which would make a screaming I/O sub-system. However i also want lots of on-line data capability so speed is not the only priority. This moves me to the 500P enclosure, a x5 SATA PM-only setup. It allows sleep, drive temp monitoring and S.M.A.R.T. What i like about this is i can run a 2-3 drives of 4-500GB SATAII in a fast RAID leaving 3-2 drives for rolling (daily) and (weekly) backup processes as well as one left for x. All within one enclosure. And i still have three eSATA ports to expand on !
AMUG has some good detailed reviews of this and similar equipment:
http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/home_frame.html
I've not settled on software to run my backups yet, but the above represents my theoritical approach for on-line storage expansion of my Quad. What i am hesitant about is whether i will stick with my mac setup. No matter how much screaming about the lack of video upgrades from Apple, i've been totally hacked-off at the attitude of Apple towards me and others on this Aperture-critical issue. Its a long and very sad story that Apple should be ashamed of. Its 2 days short of 1 year since Apple launched the G5 quad and still they have done NOTHING grrrrrr...
PS One other useful benefit you get from the seperate SATA controller is you can choose and gain from SATA II drives. I'm looking at the WD RE2 drives, 400 or 500GB.
PPS I've been 'stalking' macheaven in the UK, they had the 500P on a ~12% discount, but missed it. Scan seems to have the best prices on drives.
Hope this helps, and appreciate the thoughts of actual eSATA users.

Advice on UK-sourced 3.5" SATA enclosure w/ FireWire400

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