[vancenase]

hi all.

a couple questions.

1. are firewire 400 and 800 compatible? i.e. if i buy a firewire 800 hard drive enclosure (that has firewire 800 ports only), can i use this on a firewire 400 only computer? (is there a cable with different ends?)

2. any suggestions on semi-inexpensive, good quality firewire enclosures? preferably fw800, but i'll go 400 (notably if they are not compatible)

thanks...

[Hydra]

I believe most FW 800 cases have both S400 and S800 ports on them. OWC has a nice case with FW400, 800 and USB 2.0 as well. That case has all bases covered as far as I'm concerned.

OWCMEFW800

What do you intend to do with the drive? Any old run of the mill Firewire enclosure with an oxford 911 bridge will be very fast (fast enough for DV capture with a 7200 RPM drive). You may end up spending triple the money on the FW 800 enclosure and I'm not sure if it is really necessary for all but the most demanding applications.

Firewire S800 is backwards compatible AFAIK and you can get cables that go 6 pin to 9 pin for such a connection:

fw cable

-Jerry C.

[vancenase]

thanks for the response!

i'm in the process of converting from PC to MAC, so initially it'll merely house the NTFS formatted drives ... until i transfer the files.

eventually, i'll most likely use them for scientific calculations ... but, you're right, i can buy 2 fw400 enclosures for the price of 1 fw800 .. and i need two enclosures.

it's probably a no brainer. wouldn't you think if the data is on the drive and i'm just running a calculation it wouldn't matter much anywho?

how many firewire units can be 'daisy chained' together (max)?

thanks!

[vancenase]

one more question ... do i spend $90 on a fw400/usb2.0 enclosure from OWC ...

or $45 or less for a 'random' brand? and which one?!

[Hydra]

I think you can daisy-chain something like 67 devices so you should be OK for a few months at least I got my brother the ADS Pyro case for around $60 with the 911 bridge as a gift (I would not buy one without the 911 bridge chip-set) and he loves the extra DV capacity for his iMac.

OWC makes some nice cases and I think Macworld reviewed one of their S800 cases and liked it very much. The most important thing to keep in mind is that some bargain cases may not give you more that 128GB drive capacity (much like the ATA-66 limitation), so you couldn't throw in a 300GB Maxtor or the like. If you have some old, smaller drives lying around that may not be a problem, however.

These guys have a dual drive enclosure for under $60.
http://www.compgeeks.com/

I have no experience with this enclosure but have considered getting one for extra storage. Just take a look at the specs and what drives it will or won't work with - it looks a little hit or miss.

Hope this helps.

-Jerry C.

[slider]

Originally posted by vancenase:
one more question ... do i spend $90 on a fw400/usb2.0 enclosure from OWC ...

or $45 or less for a 'random' brand? and which one?!

From what I have gathered the most important thing is to make sure you have the oxford 911 bridge.

There is fwdepot.com and firewiredirect.com that you can check out too.

[zigzag]

Like hydra says, the problem with the super-cheap enclosures is that they might not support larger-capacity drives. Be sure to double-check when you buy.

I have 2 OWC 400 enclosures and they work great.

Another good source is wiebetech.com

[HouseSold]

I have bought and installed several (more than six) different makes. My most recent favorite for size, price and functionality is this one made by compucable.com and sold at Fry's (among others)
http://shop4.outpost.com/product/3295171

also
http://shop4.outpost.com/product/3447663 (for 5.25 drives)
and

http://shop4.outpost.com/product/3553794
The sticker price at Fry's rang up less than it read ($10 less) at checkout

Also bought some of these over the past year.

http://www.compuvest.com/web/Items.j...10&SubcatID=25

and

http://www.cooldrives.com/firen.html

I have 2 of the Maxtor 160gb drives 7200 rpm with 8mb buffer (from Staples recent specials) that ended up costing less than $80 each after rebates.

My 1st Apple II used an audio cassette to load programs.
An automobile dealer that I worked for (circa 1989) had 6 'cake platters' for a total of 600mb (yes megabytes) total storage.
We have come along way!

Good shopping !

[vancenase]

hi all-

well, i purchased 3 FW external jobies by coolmax

see newegg description here

i have 2x 80GB drives and 1x160GB drive. the specs specfically state it supports drives up to 200GB.

yet, on my mac (TiBook), the oxford 'device' shows up as a '128GB' device.

argh! what to do?

[zigzag]

Originally posted by vancenase:
hi all-

well, i purchased 3 FW external jobies by coolmax

see newegg description here

i have 2x 80GB drives and 1x160GB drive. the specs specfically state it supports drives up to 200GB.

yet, on my mac (TiBook), the oxford 'device' shows up as a '128GB' device.

argh! what to do?

Unless someone knows of a fix, I would return it. I remember that some ATA-5 (<128GB) enclosures would support up to 200GB Maxtor drives, but only Maxtor. You might have gotten one of those. A real ATA-6 (>128GB) enclosure will support drives larger than 200GB, of any make. But maybe somebody knows of a fix.

You might also check at xlr8yourmac.com - they have a lot of reports about drive compatibility.

[THE MAC GOD]

So... am I right in guessing that I could plug my internal HD into one of those enclosures and use it via firewire... and that since there are 2 ports on the back that I could then plug in my iPod to it and use both at the same time....?

[dooger]

I was wondering if anyone here had any experiences with Meritline enclosures, specifically this one:

http://www.meritline.com/meritline/hotmerfir13a.html

Does anyone know if this enclosure has the Oxford 911 chip in it. I couldn't find any specific information on the site.

I have my old 20 GB sitting around now that I put in a new 120 GB for my Cube. Thanks

[Magic Genie]

I'm looking at rigging an external Serial ATA rig up using parts from Addonics.

They say SATA is not just internal anymore.

The total cost is way lower than Firewire800, and SATA is way faster.

Any advice?


That's me with my new G5.

[badtz]

Originally posted by dooger:


http://www.meritline.com/meritline/hotmerfir13a.html

Does anyone know more information about this enclosure?

I would be very interested in it. Since there's not much information about it about on the website nor google

[HouseSold]

You might check out:
http://www.tomatochip.com/