External enclosure for internal drive?

If I replace the 80 GB hard drive that will be coming with my Macbook with a lareger drive running at 7200 RPM, I would like to convert the stock one into an external drive.
Can anyone recommend a specific "enclosure" that will convert the 2.5" with the SATA interface, offer both USB and firewire connections, and for a cheap price??? I would really appreciate the insight, my search thus far has me scratching my head....

Unfortunately there isn't a cheap Firewire enclosure yet. There is a really good USB one, which I have <a href="http://cavemonkey50.com/2006/07/coolgears-25-inch-sata-to-usb-hard-drive- enclosure/"
reviewed on my website</a>.
As far as Firewire v. USB, it depends what you'll use the drive for. If it's just for occasional backup or file storage, USB will work fine for you. However if you want to transfer huge files back and forth between the drive often, you'll definitely want a Firewire connection. There is a great benchmark comparison that you should check out to see the actual performance difference. Now just keep in mind that the MacBook only has a Firewire 400 port.

Similar Messages

Storage...external enclosure for SATA drives

Hey all,
I'm considering replacing the four internal SATA 1 TB drives that I have in my MacPro early 08 with the new 2 TB drives, but, would like to continue to use the 1TB drives in some kind of external enclosure system.
Any suggestions? Just got referred to some possibilities by MacSales:
FTKSATA2ME4E - port multiplier
SDITR5MB - external enclosure
FTKSATA2EEN4 - external enclosure
(these need to be pasted into their search field)

I don't have their 4bay enclosure, but i owned a portable 2TB hard drive, the drive is fast! the drive so far is running very good! I just tried out this drive when i was looking for an external drive and saw this review on macworld:
http://www.macworld.com/reviews/product/412562/review/istorageproit1_dock2tb.html

Using external scsi for internal drive.

Hi people. I have a beige g3 desktop and recently bought a sound card (pro tools project pci) that has a scsi port for external drives. The card wont work without a drive atached, and I was wondering if I could use a 50 pin centronics to 50 pin internal cable adapter to use an internal scsi inside the g3.
External scsi cases are cheap but I am trying to make some sort of portable set up and would love to avoid them.
I saw adapters on the web but could not find any here (argentina) and it is a headache to get one sent here.
Anyone have any experience with this?
Thanks in advance
Pepo

I've never used the Digidesign Pro Tools Project card, so is the external hard drive strictly needed to terminate the card's SCSI bus or does the card's configuration software require it? If you just need termination, is the card's external port the HD-50 SCSI-2 type? If so, would this active terminator solve the problem? If the interface isn't the correct one to match the one on the PCI card, could you connect a Centronics-50 active terminator to the end of the cable?
If you need to have a hard drive connected with the setup, were you planning on running the external cable through an unused PCI slot opening in the back? For a clean-looking installation, you could install an adapter like this one, in place of the PCI slot's blank cover. Unfortunately, it prevents the use of the PCI slot for other cards, and this adapter has an external DB-25 port, requiring the adapter to Centronics-50. A standard 50-conductor SCSI ribbon cable would connect between the hard drive and the interior port on the adapter card. I don't know if you've noticed, but just behind the left-side drive bays in the G3 desktop, you'll see a removable piece of metal that closes off the inside corner of the drive bay chassis. You can remove that piece of metal, and provide a path for the drive's data cable to reach the PCI slot area of the computer. It's easier than routing the cable back through the slot behind the CD-ROM drive, which is usually too crowded with cabling anyway.

External enclosure and hard drives for mac g5 quad

I would like to add an external enclosure with two drives to my mac g5 quad. Does anyone have experience with these or do you know if this will work okay without issues?
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Maxtor/7H500F0/
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other%20World%20Computing/MEFW924AL2K/
also wondering if this enclosure has a fan or if that would be necessary...
Thx

I have the same case, only mine's the version that has PATA drives inside. It's pretty quiet and does have a fan. I've had no issues with it. It's setup with two 250GB drives striped into a RAID 0 configuration.
I personally am not a fan of Maxtor drives - I prefer the Western Digital RE2 RAID Edition. I have two of these in an external SATA enclosure.
What will you be using the drives for? You'll get better speed from the drives by putting them in an external SATA case, although this requires adding an eSATA controller card to the computer. A single WD RE2 drive is faster than my RAID 0 FW800 setup, and the FW800 setup runs pretty close to the maximum FW800 transfer speeds of about 80 MB/sec.
I'm using a FirmTek Seritek 2EN2 enclosure and their 2SE2-E PCI Express card. OWC has a bundle with these two items. Like I stated earlier, I've got two 500GB WD RE2 drives inside (drives purchased from Newegg.com where they're less expensive).
OWC also has a Mercury Elite eSATA enclosure which looks just like the FW800 one, only in black.

Can I move Time Capsule hard drive to an external enclosure for faster restore (or initial back-up)?

I upgraded my Time Capsule with a 4TB hard drive. I just backed up 500GB of data from a MacBook Pro with Time Machine and it took almost an entire day over a wired gigabit connection. The next MacBook Pro I need to back up has more than 2TB of data, so I'm anticipating that the process will take nearly four days. The slow speed of the Time Capsule leaves me with two questions...
1. If I ever need to restore my entire system from the Time Capsule, can I remove the drive from the Time Capsule, install it in an external hard drive enclosure and restore from that as it will be a much faster USB 3.0 connection than through the Time Capsule itself?
2. To save the time of waiting four days for the initial Time Machine back-up, can I remove the drive from the Time Capsule, install it in an external enclosure to do the first back-up and then put it back in the Time Capsule for future back-ups?
Thank you.

2. To save the time of waiting four days for the initial Time Machine back-up, can I remove the drive from the Time Capsule, install it in an external enclosure to do the first back-up and then put it back in the Time Capsule for future back-ups?
The answer to this is no.. TM backup is done differently on a local drive .. cf a network drive. The network drive must have the backup inside a sparsebundle.. you can read the backup locally and it is vaguely possible to backup files from local to sparsebundle but you are still going to find TM is pretty finicky if it finds you tampered with its internals.
I agree with Kappy .. if you want to use local backups just use USB3 drive.. it is a bit unfair to compare.. as USB3 is 5Gbps connection whilst ethernet is only 1Gbps.. you might also find the speed in the backup is limited by sheer mechanical drive performance.. figures are always quoted for single large files but when you copy heaps of small files.. a mechanical drive takes a lot of time writing file allocations.. even if the actual file write is short.. it takes a long time relative to track after track of large file copying.
Let me add a few things.. 500GB disk in the MBP is not the quickest.. they are usually the slow 5400rpm drives.. unless you replaced it.
Our experience of TC suggests a speed of around 50GB/hr average doing backups.. but it is essential that you turn off wireless.. otherwise you will slow it down.. It is also important IPv6 is set correctly to link-local only and you cannot trust auto to get that right.. you need to set it.
If you still cannot achieve average speed of around 50GB/hr something is wrong.. either you are not getting full gigabit or something is slow.. test with the single large file eg 1GB over ethernet and see.. you should manage speed of around 50MBytes/sec.. (it can vary from 30-60 however... ).
It can take a long long time to do 2TB.. if that is all internal then perhaps look at using TM for the boot drive only.. you surely have it partitioned.. or multiple disks.. and use Carbon Copy Cloner for the other partitions.. it is not that it will go any faster.. but that you can separate out the tasks easier.

External Enclosure for Drive Module?

We are setting up an emergency contingency strategy and we would like to be able to remove a drive module from our Xserve, then use it on another computer. Ideally we would like an external Firewire drive enclosure that would accept the Apple Drive Module as is. That's vs. unscrewing the drive from the module and installing it in an enclosure or in another computer. Has anyone seen anything like this? A carry bag or case for the drive module would be handy also. Thanks for any pointers.
Xserve G5 Mac OS X (10.4.5)

Joseph-
Not trying to be an arse, but what about another XServe? I do not know how backwards compatible your drive modules are (as in a used G4 XServe), but certainly even a single processor node with no license would probably end up costing about the same as a specialty-type external housing.
Heck, that would possibly give you an entire contingency strategy in a box.
Just a thought. I know a nice case in the 300 dollar or less range would be superb, but I think they get you on that Apple proprietary thing.
-DaddyPaycheck

MP early 2008: Seeking advice on e-sata card and external enclosure for backup purposes

Hi everyone
I currently have my home folder on an internal 3TB drive which is SuperDuper'd every day to an identical internal drive.
I am running out of space and need to think of a longer-term solution. I will have to use several large drives - one drive for photos, one for iTunes library, one for documents etc. Each drive would be mirrored with SuperDuper to something like an IcyCUBE and connected through a PCIE e-sata card. I'm not considering any form of RAID solution.
Is Sonnet still the card manufacturer to go for - if so, is the E2P the card I need? Are there alternative cards and if so what should I look for (certain chipsets perhaps)?
Are there any known compatibility problems between certain cards and certain drive enclosures?
Is there a way to have only one cable between the computer and the enclosure or must each drive have its own connection?
Thanks very much in advance for any help with this.
Cheers
Philip

E2P is a low end two port card with limitation in bandwidth. Maybe you want 4-port card to give you more growth and expansion.
Green drives may or may not be ideal for your media storage needs. Cheaper. When floods drove up prive of drives in Sept 2011 they become more popular as Black 2TB price went to $270
Clone is one thing. Mirror is entirely different tech.
The issue are avoid those name brand WD and Seagate or LaCie enclosures.
Every new OS and Mac Pro has had some sort of change to drivers and such.
4TB drives should be part of your storage strategy.
Software RAID is fine with daily or as needed backups. Clone at least one, and TimeMachine for hourly. But never ever have only one backup set. One set should be off line and they would be rotated. For safety sake and avoid the all your eggs in one basket. Which is why yes internal is convenient but external drives and also drive enclosure that allows swapping.
A good USB3 + eSATA card is the most popular I think right now today.
And use Green 3-4TB for backup, and WD Black or enterprise for internal storage.

3rd Party SATA raid cards for internal drives?

All --
Apart from the discussion as to if RAID actually benefits a home desktop system, I am wondering if anyone has the lowdown on using 3rd party SATA raid cards to support the INTERNAL hard drives on the Mac Pro series?
My Mac Pro is still slated to be built at Apple and for now I have the minimum memory and HD spec being requested at Apple, with the plan to upgrade the memory and drives from OWC or another vendor.
I've toyed with the idea of utilizing Disk Utility's software RAID features (e.g. RAID 0 for scratch disks, RAID 1 for boot, RAID 0+1 for all else.) I've also toyed with the notion of searching for a hardware raid solution which would allow me to transfer the internal SATA cable runs from the motherboard to a host adapter card for an internal multi-channel experience (with options to create and break mirrors to external devices for backup purposes.)
So....
Has anyone experience or utilized 3rd party hardware raid controllers which can connect to the internal HD bays? Are there limitations to this (ie, does the boot drive HAVE to reside off the internal motherboard controllers, or can an internal hardware controller successfully boot the system) of which ought be noted?
Finally, in the event that a host adapter card cannot drive the interna bays, can anyone give feedback to hardware SATA cards to power external drive bays with support for Disk Utility (to allow RAID1 pairings of internal drives to external snapshot-backup drives)?
Thanks for your time,
Ian Poulin
Richmond, Va

I am wondering if anyone has the lowdown on using 3rd party SATA raid cards to support the INTERNAL hard drives on the Mac Pro series?
There are many 3rd party controllers that support the internal HDs if an internal iPass connector is used. The problem is that some are bootable but most are not.
The Areca ARC-1680ix-12 and the HighPoint RocketRAID 4320 are bootable. However, the system cannot be installed via the Apple DVD. Instead the user needs to clone a boot drive with the proper drivers to the boot volume on the controller and then boot from the 3rd party controller.
The other issue I found is that these controllers do not support Boot Camp. If Boot Camp is desired, my recommendation would be to leave the internal HDs on the Mac Pro internal bus intact and use the 3rd party controller for external storage. This method provides four internal bays that are bootable, support Boot Camp and can be used for system backups. I use the 3rd party controller for external storage for large RAID sets and hot swapping hard disks.
With the internal bays intact and external hot swap RAID storage available the user can support Boot Camp, multiple system volumes and large external RAID sets. From my experience using a 3rd party controller with the internal HD bays always has some limitations. The user usually does not realize it unit later when Boot Camp does not work or the computer fails on a system upgrade or the controller does not work at all with a new version of Mac OS X.
Staying with the standard internal Mac Pro bay configuration will be the best configuration to avoid compatibility issues with future versions of Mac OS X. It is rumored that the new Snow Leopard may require 64-bit drivers. If that is the case, I would expect most if not all existing 3rd party controller drivers to fail. Some drivers will be upgraded after a few months while others may not. Having the internal Mac Pro SATA controller intact should at least allow the Mac Pro to boot if my guess about compatibility issues is correct.
can anyone give feedback to hardware SATA cards to power external drive bays with support for Disk Utility (to allow RAID1 pairings of internal drives to external snapshot-backup drives)?
There are a large number of external controllers that work with Disk Utility. Here are some of my favorites.
1. FirmTek SeriTek/2SE2-E and the SeriTek/5PM
http://firmtek.stores.yahoo.net/sata5pm2se2.html
http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/articles/firmtek/5pm/
2. Sonnet Tempo E4P
http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/articles/sonnet/mac-pro/
3. DAT Optic eSATA_PCIe8
http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/articles/datoptic/pcie8/
Have fun!

External Enclosure for Powerbook

I recently purchased an Addonics external enclosure to use with a G4 Powerbook. I also bought a Maxtor 400gb drive. After having some problems in formatting the drive, I found out the following from Addonics:
**For Mac OS only, there have been reports of incompatibility with the Firewire connection on G5 and PowerBook running Mac OS 10.2 using SATA hard drive larger than 200G. The latest Mac OS 10.3.6 is not supported at this time.**
I'm wanting suggestions on which enclosure to purchase that will function correctly.
Thanks,
John Lanza
Media Services Manager
Town of Smyrna
615-355-5703

http://www.wiebetech.com/products/toughtech.php
I have also used these, but they are pricer than granitedigital.
One very tough enclosure, however, and might worth the money for mobile application such as the poster mentioned.

How do I prepare G4 with external HD for internal HD replacement?

My G4, bought in 2005, is becoming unstable. I want to prepare for replacing the internal HD. I have an external Firewire 186 GB Seagate HD that is only partially utilized for storing photographic images. I have the original install disks for OS X 10.4 and for many - but not all - of the applications on the internal HD. MS Office might not have another install privilege and Adobe can be difficult about reusing their product serial numbers. I assume that the authorization codes for purchased downloads are stored somewhere on the internal HD.
Can I move the applications to the external HD while I replace the internal HD, reinstall the OS and the Intego security suite, set up the WLAN codes, and update the OS? I would not need to run the applications from the external HD but I would want to reinstall them from there onto the new internal HD if that is at all possible.

Hi Oliver, and a warm welcome to the forums!
First, how much space is free on the external drive, and how much is used on the Internal drive?
The best way would be to Clone the Internal to the external drive, without erasing anything on the external, which if you have enough space can be done if we take care with additional instructions to follow if needed.
After we know the answers to these questions...
Get carbon copy cloner to make an exact copy of your old HD to the New one...
http://www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html
SuperDuper...
http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/
Or the most expensive one & my favorite, Tri-Backup...
http://www.tri-edre.com/english/tribackup.html
For the new Internal drive... How to format your disks...
http://www.kenstone.net/fcphomepage/partitioningtiger.html

Can I use Hardrive enclosure for DVDRW Drive

Hi All,
Can I use an external Firewire/USB Hardrive enclosure for a Pioneer DVR-109 drive. It obvisously will not fit in the actual enclosure, but can I use the interface connection and power plug, just to test the drive and perhaps flash the firmware on a PC, before I actually put it in my iMac?
I have an AcommData Ultra ATA 133 firewire/USB2 External enclosure and a Pioneer DVR-109. Thanks

ya actualy i tried the exact same thing with my hardrive enclosure as long as it's an ide or you can plug it in it should work great.

Transfer speeds for internal drive/FireWire

I have a 2 yr old PowerMac G5 with a single 160 Gb hard drive, so I have an internal drive bay available that has a 150 MBps SATA controler. Does that mean I won't get the expected speed from one of the big Seagate or Maxtor internal SATA drives with 1.5 or 3 Gbps transfer capacity?
If that's true, would I get faster transfers using an external drive via FireWire 800?
Thanks!

The maximum transfer speed of the 1.5 Gbps is actually about 1.2 Gbps (80% efficiency), or 150 MBps. So, in theory the 3 Gbps interface would be about twice as fast.
However, no single drive can achieve throughput at even the 1.2 Gbps level, so you're really not missing anything if you put in a drive with a 3 Gbps interface on it.
FW800 is 800 Mbps or 100 MBps at 100% efficiency. Real world transfer speeds would be in the 80MBps range at best. That's also a pretty tough speed to reach for a single drive. My 10,000 rpm 150GB Raptor drive can benchmark at or above that level, but many drives won't be able to.

OMG!!! I lost all my data on my external and my internal drive has been wiped clean! Please help

I bought a very good condition, used macbook pro 4.1. While attempting to transfer files from one of my external drives, some how I erased both the external drive and the internal drive. I didn'y get install disks with it either. I am in a huge panic as I am a 3D graphics designer and had over 5 years woth of work on the external. Can anyone help please? Hopefully something that won't cost anything as I am totally broke, and gonna be much worse if I can't retrieve my client's property

My computer is not working, is my personal data lost?
.Create a data recovery/undelete external boot drive
Erase, formatting, OS X installs on Mac's

WD3200KSRTL Caviar 320 GB SATA for internal drive? ok?

Hi all, I just wanted to make sure that this drive would be ok for an extra internal drive (actually it will be my 3rd internal) on my MacPro 2.66. I'll be using this drive for my Bootcamp/Windows partition also.
Western Digital WD3200KSRTL Caviar 320 GB SATA 3.5-Inch Hard Drive
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000FBSREU/ref=cmcr_pr_producttop
So, I just wanted to make sure it would be compatible with my MacPro?
And was also curious to see if anyone has had any issues with that specific drive?
If someone had another recommendation for a drive in the same price range I'd be curious to hear also. I do need to get it on Amazon though as I have a gift certificate I'd like to use up.
Thanks!
Jeff
Message was edited by: JeffrySG

I always edit out any 'ref' on links.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000FBSREU/
I think you could do better though for slight more but high performance and excellent drive.
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Western%20Digital/WD6400AAKS/
http://www.barefeats.com/harper14.html
Boot drives:
http://www.barefeats.com/harper9.html
But as to whether it works, yes.
WD now has new Caviar line. Same price.
http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=299

Size limit for internal drives?

I have a G4 Silverdoor with dual 1.25 GB processors. Currently, it has three internal drives, 120 GB each. Is there a size limit to the fourth drive? I was thinking about getting a 400 or 500 GB internal drive.

Is this your system? Mac Upgrades
They say:
Internal Hard Drive Upgrades
The PowerMac G4 Quicksilver can can take internal IDE hard drives of sizes up to 120GB. Up to two extra drives can be added alongside your existing hard drive - a straight replacement is obviously possible as well.
If you want to use a larger hard drive you will need to install a high-spec IDE controller into a PCI socket. See the expansion cards section at the end of this page for details on available cards.
It is also possible to use the new SATA drives in this machine, with the purchase of a SATA controller card.
G4 AGP Mac OS X (10.4.8) RAM: 1.12 GB; ATI 9800.

External enclosure for internal drive?

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