Whither firewire?  looking for SATA / Firewire (1394A) drive enclosure

I still think (rather I know) that Firewire (1394A) is faster than USB, for applications like storing an external music library for iTunes.
However, I won't go so far as to say FW is being phased out but I am having a dickens of a time finding a FW enclosure.
can anyone reading this steer me to a good SATA / firewire enclosure out there? something that takes a SATA drive on the inside and connects to a firewire 1394A 400 port on the outside.
I came across this - and it says "ATA-133" - am not sure if that's P-ATA or S-ATA, as far as I know, those connectors are NOT compatible. elsewhere on the page it says IDE to FW, so maybe this unit is NOT what I need:
<http://www.google.com/products/catalog?q=firewire+enclosure&cid=400903329999346 1364>
help!
w

Okay - here's the specific scenario - am intending to run iTunes from a G4 powerBook with an 80 GB internal drive.
I want to add to the library by using an external drive of roughly 200 GB, maybe more.
The only issue is that I know the larger the drive, the slower iTunes will be, the harder it will be to work in the program etc.
And it will make it even slower if part of the library is external. Since I assumed Firewire is at least somewhat faster, I wanted to go with a FW drive...
so I ask you: will it make any difference? will FW be any faster for the program than USB?
Also, I see that there are TONS of drive enclosures for SATA drives with USB ports - more than I can count - and quite a few with both USB and eSATA (I would love to use that with the powerBook, but of course it doesn't have PCI slots). Am surprised at the dearth of Firewire enclosures!
(yes, you guessed correctly, I have a number of SATA drives lying around that I wanted to re-use for this purpose...)
thanks
W

Similar Messages

  • Looking for Multi-Bay IDE Drive Enclosure

    I currently have this AMS Venus T4U 4-bay IDE enclosure connected to my AEBS. It works fine, but I just noticed that the fan is not working. I'm not sure how important this is, since the fan can be turned on or off with a button on the front of the enclosure. But I'm guessing that no fan with 4 hard drives is not a good thing. So I think I should replace it, but I can't find this enclosure anywhere. Nor can I find any other multi-bay IDE enclosures. It would appear no one makes IDE enclosures anymore, at least not multi-bay ones. And I have all these 250 & 300 GB IDE drives that I can no longer use in any of my computers.
    Any suggestions? Know of anyone that still makes multi-bay IDE enclosures? Or should I just not worry about having no fan in my enclosure? Or should I just bite the bullet and get a few SATA drives and a new enclosure? If so, any recommendations for an enclosure that works with the AEBS?

    I did see a few on CompUSA but you would have to qualify them for the type of SATA (IDE) drives you have in your current enclosure. You may have better luck parting out the power supply and fan assembly. I certainly would not run without airflow.
    Now you could rig a fan -- just a fan on the inside or outside to force air through. Get a "Y" adapter you would use to power a disk (if your enclosure is suitably supplied) and run the fan off of that. Mount it inside or outside the case as you need (depending on how much room you have to work with inside) and make your own "Frankenclosure."
    But you are correct. Everyone is going to SATA. I would imagine you may have problems replacing the drives pretty soon. And, since SATA has higher limits on drive sizes, you may be much better off.

  • Startup problem with Adaptec FireWire/USB drive enclosure?

    I recently acquired a Core Duo 1.66GHz mini. Soon after buying it I noticed that on startup, I get to the gray screen with Apple logo, and it freezes there for about 3-4 minutes before the spinning wheel appears briefly and then OS X starts normally.
    I eventually figured out that it only does this when my Adaptec 3.5" FireWire/USB drive enclosure is connected via FireWire. If the drive is not connected the mini starts up lightning fast.
    It seems to be an issue specific to the mini and this model of enclosure. I put another drive in the enclosure; same issue. I tried another enclosure I had; issue doesn't happen. I tried the Adaptec enclosure with a MacBook; issue doesn't happen. I exchanged the Adaptec enclosure for another of the same model; the issue still occurs. I even exchanged the mini for another; the issue still occurs.
    Any ideas as to why this is happening and what I might do to fix it? I don't restart very often so this isn't too annoying, nonetheless I'd really love to fix it if I can.

    Afraid it is all downhill from here: from what I have learnt, that drive uses a Prolific Revision A chipset. This means it cannot be used as the boot drive for your mac. http://www.ultraproducts.com/ seems to be the manufacturer and on their website forums about their enclosures detail similar issues and worse - write failures over firewire.
    I cannot say much about the chipsets. Some folk swear by Oxford, which has to the best of my knowledge always supported Firewire startup. Personally, my ext hd is a Prolific Rev C and I have had no problems at all.
    That all said and done, I trust that only the firewire connection is made and not the FW and USB? Also, if it is connected only via USB, are the mount problems experienced?
    Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.

  • Looking for an external hard drive for my ibook...

    I know there are a lot of posts related to external hard drives, but I have very specific needs that haven't been answered as far as I can tell. I run Tiger 10.4.11 on my 1.33 ghz ibook (which WON'T DIE) and need a hard drive that:
    1) is Mac-friendly
    2) Can be set to do auto backup when I plug in my computer
    3) has at least 500GB storage
    4) has at least a 3-year warranty
    5) can run, power-wise, off my USB hub (though this is the least of my concerns, frankly)
    6) can be used with a Macbook when I buy one next year (very important)
    I'm not so concerned with speed, as I will mostly be doing backup at night, while I'm asleep. Does such a drive exist for around $100?

    1) is Mac-friendly
    98% of the drives meet this criteria
    2) Can be set to do auto backup when I plug in my computer
    I don't know any drives that will do that. Some have buttons that allow you to do backup by pushing the button.
    3) has at least 500GB storage
    4) has at least a 3-year warranty
    A lot of those available.
    5) can run, power-wise, off my USB hub (though this is the least of my concerns, frankly)
    Look for a "portable" external drive.
    6) can be used with a Macbook when I buy one next year (very important)
    Any drive that matches the criteria above.
    Does such a drive exist for around $100?
    Yes many. You can watch Dealmac.com for hard drive deals. It is pretty easy to get 1 TB for $100 these days.

  • I use Djay for my Apple and I would like to use TC as an external hd to access from Djay, however when I look for my external T1 drive I cannot find it in iTunes so I can load onto Djay? Any help?

    I use Djay for my Apple and I would like to use TC as an external hd to access from Djay, however when I look for my external T1 drive I cannot find it in iTunes so I can load onto Djay? Any help?

    Initially, you asked if you can hardwire your MBA to the TC. The answer is yes, by using the optional USB Ethernet adapter that Apple provides. However, in order for your MBA to access the TC's internal or USB-attached HDD, it would need to establish a network connection to it. This would be true of any NAS device on an Ethernet network. Therein, lies the problem. Your MBA cannot connect to two networks simultaneously.
    One option then, would be to have two separate iTunes Media folders; one on the MBA & the other on the TC. This way, you can download the music to your MBA when connected to the Internet at the AirPort lounge, and then use iTunes Consolidate Library feature to transfer the audio files to the TC's iTunes Media Folder location. A great program to help maintain multiple iTunes Librarys and/or Media Folders, that you may want to consider, is PowerTunes.

  • Looking for recommendations - new internal drive for MBP

    Hi all,
    I have a 17" MBP core 2 duo from a couple of years ago, with a 100GB 7200rpm drive. I want to swap out the drive with a new 500GB drive, still 7200rpm, so I'm looking for recommendations as to what people think are the current best of the crop. Any suggestions?
    Cheers,
    Antonio

    I was looking for a 500GB 7200RPM drive for my MBP 15" at the end of 2008, but no one made one yet. I saw the Seagate ST9500420ASG 500GB 7200RPM 16MB BUFFER SERIAL ATA listed as coming soon on MacMall and a few other places in January 2009 and ordered it as soon as it was available.
    I had done some research on power consumption and performance... Tom's Hardware had some good info on the subject. The fastest drives at the time were the 320GB 7200 RPM and 500GB 5400 RPM. If the trends I came across during my research held up, power consumption for the new Seagate shouldn't have affected my battery life too much. All my research seemed to confirm this.
    Now that I have been using the drive for a few months, I can tell you that my batter life has taken a HUGE hit. I used to easily get 5 hours with my old 120 GB stock drive... now, I'm lucky if I get 2 hours. Plus, it seems that this drive gets hot enough to cause performance issues.. I'm not sure if that's the case yet, but I will be bringing my MBP into the Apple store to check on it.
    At this point, I'm willing to sacrifice some speed for more battery life and a cooler running computer.
    All this to say, be sure you're willing to sacrifice some battery life for the biggest and fastest drive around.

  • Looking for a back up drive for photos and videos that works with time machine, prefer wireless. Time capsule has poor reviews and already have BT hub

    Looking for a back up drive for photos and videos that works with time machine, prefer wireless. Time capsule has poor reviews and already have BT hub that serves as a good router. 3gb or 4gb capacity preferred but 2 would suffice.

    Plug a NAS into the BT Hub that does TM. Look at Synology.
    You just use the wireless of the hub.
    But the cheapest solution is still the TC.

  • Looking to Buy a Hard Drive Enclosure - Opinions?

    I'm looking to buy a hard drive enclosure to attach to my linux box, and I'm wondering if anyone has had any experience with the AEN-U35SE from Airlink (see http://www.airlink101.com/products/aenu35se.php ). It's fairly cheap at my local Fry's, but I'm wondering if anyone has had any issues with it, both with linux compatibility and cooling (they say it's fanless, and I'm not sure if that's good or bad). This would be attached to a server as bulk storage and wouldn't be under high usage, but I'm not wanting to doom my hard drive to certain death.
    I can't find any reviews of it at all online, so I guess it must be at least fairly new. It's not carried by Tigerdirect or NewEgg, so I can't find anything there.
    EDIT:
    Gah, this product is apparantly discontinued, which is probably why NewEgg and TigerDirect didn't have it. Anything anyone can recommend? I only need one drive, and fanless is good as long as the drive doesn't overheat.
    Last edited by arew264 (2009-06-12 22:46:07)

    combuster wrote:Just avoid coolermaster enclosures, they don't work on linux, got a x-craft lite 250 on some laptop review competition and it doesn't get recognized...
    Shame on them, that or just plain cheap crappy chips they used to make it
    On the issue of enclosures .... nothing I can recommend because so far I'm not happy with any I bought. On the compatibility side they are all ok but after a good period of time (1year or 1.5years) the the hd sometimes starts acting strange. It stops and restarts almost immediately, a problem that doesn't happen when I plug it inside my desktop pc. In one of the external enclosures I have narrowed the problem to the power supply.
    I could plug a Y power cable and monitor the voltages with a multimeter, the 5V rail would be 4.5V when the disk acted strange but for some reason sometimes the rail was close to the nominal 5V (4.9V~5.1V) and everything would work well.
    Because of this I have started to believe that the power supplies that have the 12V and 5V output are a big no no, there are several reasons for me not to like it specially because all of the 2 I have behave the same way >_<.
    If possible I would get an enclosure that receives only 12V from the outside and then generates the 5V internally but I believe that is hard to find.
    The two enclosures I have have are:
    http://en.vipower.com/products01_01.php?ID=154  (this one as a bit expensive usb2 to ide)
    http://www.tecforsis.pt/produto.asp?idproduto=16907  (cheap box usb2 to sata/ide)

  • SATA to Firewire hard drive enclosure recommendations?

    I just picked up my new MacBook Pro last week and am planning to sell my Dual 1.8 Powermac and white MacBook soon.
    I have a 250GB 3.5" SATA drive in the PowerMac that I want to keep and put in an external enclosure for use with my MacBook Pro.
    Any recommendations on SATA to Firewire 3.5" external hard drive enclosures? Of course I'd prefer it be as small as possible.
    Thanks

    I like this one.
    http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other%20World%20Computing/MEFW924AL1K/
    Best of luck.

  • Looking for a new hard drive for my MacBookPro 5,2 (17" 2009 Unibody) : hybrid from seagate or a 7200rpm ?

    I am looking for a faster and higher capacity hard drive for my 2009 unibody MacBookPro 17".
    I wonder if I should go for a SSHD from Seagate model ST1000LM014 or for a standard HD but with 7200RPM.
    I am worried about the reliability of the Hybride model from Seagate and if it is really that fast.

    Hi, I have dv9730ca laptop myself and I have 2 160GB seagate 5400rpm 8MB hdd's, they have an external data transfer rate of 300MB/sec and an internal data transfer rate of 1.1GB/sec. They do get up to around 55oC (i use cpuid - hwmonitor to check this out) and I have heard using the 7200rpm hdd's can increase the heat output so I would recommend using the 5400rpm hdd's instead. The best way I have found to get over the heat issue from any laptop is to use a targus chillmat, it has 2 fans and runs off a usb port. I hope this info helps you out
    HP Pavilion DV9730CA - AMD Turion 64 X2 TL-64 2200MHz, 2GB (2x1024MB) SODIMM RAM, 320GB (2x160GB) Seagate 5400rpm HDD's, nVidia GeForce 8400 GS Graphics, Broadcom ABG Draft N Wireless, HD DVD SuperMulti DL DVD+RW, 4 USB 2.0, S Video, VGA, HDMI, Firewire, 5 in 1 card reader, RJ-45, RJ-11, Expansion Port 3, Expresscard 34/52.

  • Looking for a 2nd hard drive on DV9700

    I want to add a 2nd hard drive to my HP dv9728ca. Are there any specs I should look for? Right now I have a 160GB hd, and the manual ( http://h10032.www1.hp.com/ctg/Manual/c01295898.pdf ) seems to indicate my only choices are 120GB or 160GB. According to the service manual, if I want a 200GB or 250GB, I can't use my 160GB anymore. The possible options are as follows : 250x2 (5400), 200x2 (4200), 160x2 (5400), 160+120 (5400), 120x2 (5400 or 7200, but both the same). Now I've upgraded computers before, even built some from scratch, and I've never seen this type of requirement. Is this for real? I've read a post from someone saying he had trouble with his new drive which was bigger than his original one. What about the 1.5GB/sec vs 3.0GB/sec? My understanding is that the 3.0 is downward compatible, but some seem to pretend you have to set a jumper on the drive to bring it down to 1.5. Any help would be appreciated. And what if I add a 7200rpm drive instead of 5400rpm? I don't see how these should cause any trouble, but from looking around it seems HP motherboards are very specific as to what they'll let you do. I already purchased the caddy kit, all I need is the hard drive, but I don't want to end up with one that's not compatible.
    If anyone's added an additional hard drive to a dv9700 series laptop, please let me know what model you chose (brand, capacity vs what you had, 5400/7200, 8MB/16MB).

    Hi, I have dv9730ca laptop myself and I have 2 160GB seagate 5400rpm 8MB hdd's, they have an external data transfer rate of 300MB/sec and an internal data transfer rate of 1.1GB/sec. They do get up to around 55oC (i use cpuid - hwmonitor to check this out) and I have heard using the 7200rpm hdd's can increase the heat output so I would recommend using the 5400rpm hdd's instead. The best way I have found to get over the heat issue from any laptop is to use a targus chillmat, it has 2 fans and runs off a usb port. I hope this info helps you out
    HP Pavilion DV9730CA - AMD Turion 64 X2 TL-64 2200MHz, 2GB (2x1024MB) SODIMM RAM, 320GB (2x160GB) Seagate 5400rpm HDD's, nVidia GeForce 8400 GS Graphics, Broadcom ABG Draft N Wireless, HD DVD SuperMulti DL DVD+RW, 4 USB 2.0, S Video, VGA, HDMI, Firewire, 5 in 1 card reader, RJ-45, RJ-11, Expansion Port 3, Expresscard 34/52.

  • Looking for a new Hard Drive for my MacBook

    I have less than 1 GB left on my Hard Drive and I'm looking for a bigger drive. I'm looking for a 250 GB as that will match my desktop. I know they were some talk about issues with the Western Digital Drives.
    Any suggestions? Also, I was thinking of going for one that was 7200 RPM. Is that going to be a lot louder and kill my battery a lot quicker? Thanks!

    I've got a 200GB Hitachi Travelstar 7K200 drive in my MacBook right now. About the only issue is that the bearings are a bit louder than the Apple OEM Seagate Momentus 5300.3 drive that was installed at the factory. Right now iStat Pro says that the hard drive temp is 72°F, which is about the same as my factory drive. Most specs say that you might expect maybe a half watt more power draw, which is unimportant if it's plugged in most of the time, and fairly small if you're on battery power.
    Initially I thought my MacBook was going to destroy itself, with the fan hitting maximum and CPU cycles being used up. Turns out it was just Spotlight indexing the hard drive, and the same would have been true for any new drive installation. I didn't think it would be an issue with a cloned drive, but it was.

  • Looking for replacement internal hard drives for a MacPro

    Looking to replace internal hard drives in a MacPro.  Was thinking about 3TB.  Any recommendations?

    Look in System Report for the link speed available. (Mine says 3 Gigabit.) Get drives with at least that speed; going beyond that won't get you any more performance.

  • Recommended SCSI to SATA converter for older external hard drive enclosure?

    I have a SCI external hard drive enclosure that I would like to be able to use a with a SATA drive. Can anyone suggest an inexpensive, reliable SCSI to SATA bridge board?

    Those are both good points. It's a really nice enclosure (its a red FW400 drive that instead of being a rectangular box, it has this funky wave shape). I could just use the drive with an existing SCSI drive and make it for something that doesn't need high r/w speeds like documents.

  • System is looking for a Western Digital drive

    I've had a Spotlight indexing problem that seems to be partially fixed but I see something in console under the system log that may be preventing Spotlight from finishing it's indexing.
    Here's the reference:
    Sep 17 11:28:57 Macintosh-2 WDDriveManagerStatusMenu[167]: *** attempt to pop an unknown autorelease pool (0x843400)
    This is a reference to a Western Digital Drive...the drive was put in a new case.
    I keep getting this error message in Console in the system log...Spotlight gets to within 30 secs of indexing, then keeps delaying it's completion.  Could this error message be preventing the completion?

    People used to get that Console message before WDDriveManager was updated for Snow Leopard. Back in 2009-2010, it was not compatible with Snow Leopard.
    Do you have the latest updates installed for WDDriveManager?
    Secondly, my understanding is that the main purpose of WDDriveManager is to enable functionality of lights and buttons on the WD hard drive case. However if you moved the drive to a new case, perhaps such functionality is no longer relevant or perhaps there is a conflict there (software looking for a certain type of HD case but can't find it?). In that case, you might consider removing or uninstalling WDDriveManager as it might no longer work with this new case you have.
    Are you using Snow Leopard? (I assume so because that's this forum, but your post indicates 10.4). Do you have the latest version of WD software? What are you using the WD software for? Is your HD case compatible with WD's software?

Maybe you are looking for