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Xeo · Oct 22, 2003, 12:24 AM

I'm looking for a dual or quad FW 400 enclosure for ATA hard drives. It needs to support large drives (138+). I've seen a few at fwdepot.com, but I'm looking for more options. It needs to have FireWire 400 since that's all I have, but if it has 800 as well, that's a bonus since sometime in the future I expect to upgrade.

LgX · Oct 22, 2003, 06:15 AM

I did the same search sometime ago. Actually there are quite a few dual firewire (400) enclosures around (FireWiredepot, Wiebetech etc.). As far as I know only FireWire Depot do a quad enclosure (both 400 and 800), also you will have to add a second bridgeboard to use 4 drives.
I settled at the end with THIS ONE. I have only two 250GB drives in it and didn't install the extra bridgeboard yet, so I cannot comment on its use as a quad enclosure.
So far works flawlessly (about 6 weeks). Performances are similar to ATA133.

Hope it helps.

Xeo · Oct 22, 2003, 08:18 AM

How do I used FW 400 w/ that? I don't have 800 on my B&W/iBook/eMac/etc. Do I just need one of those adapters?

Tom N · Oct 22, 2003, 10:13 AM

I have the same case as you bought, only I took the 1394a version ( a little less money and didn't need 1394b speeds).

So far no problems, except there is no method to hook up an activity light to the supplied bridge board, and Apples profiler will crash if used when this drive is turned on. I sent a note to fwdepot about the profiler crash and they advised that this was a bug with the profiler, and that Apple fixed the problem with 10.3.

Anyway, aside from that, the drive works great, is relatively quiet, and was easy to assemble and get working.

Now, as to another choice I considered, but decided not to pursue.

Get yourself an old pc computer enclosures with as many drive bays as you need. Add one or more of the various firewire bridge boards, and you have a home made multiple drive firewire enclosure, complete with power supply, fans (which may not be needed) and room for probably two cd/dvd drive and three to five hard drives.

Even if you buy the pc computer enclosure new, they can be found for less then $39 complete with power supply, so the real cost is the number of firewire bridge boards you use.

Another alternative is to use SATA (Serial ATA). Although SATA was not designed as an external cabling system, there is no real reason why you couldn't put a SATA PCI card in your Mac, and run the SATA cables (up to 39 inches in length) to an external enclosure (pc computer carcass).

Just some ideas for you.

Tom N.

scottiB · Oct 22, 2003, 11:41 AM

I bought a 4 x 5.25" SCSI enclosure off eBay for $20, added a couple FW-400 bridge boards from FW Depot (that can handle +137GB drives) and loaded some extra drives that I had (45GB, 60GB, and two 80s).

I use them for iTunes library and secondary storage--not FCP or anything like that, and it works great.

(My System Profiler does crash, too, and thanks Tom for the note that it'll be fixed with Panther).

Xeo · Oct 22, 2003, 05:50 PM

Originally posted by scottiB:
I bought a 4 x 5.25" SCSI enclosure off eBay for $20, added a couple FW-400 bridge boards from FW Depot <snip>

What did you do with the SCSI connectors? Just took them out? The power supply in it is big enough? Just wondering 'cause I see one very similar to that on eBay right now.

scottiB · Oct 23, 2003, 07:06 AM

Originally posted by Xeo:
What did you do with the SCSI connectors? Just took them out? The power supply in it is big enough? Just wondering 'cause I see one very similar to that on eBay right now.

Yep, I just removed them. The FW boards just screw in in their places. As for power, I haven't had any problems. Since it had held 4 SCSI drives to playback animation frames (I bought it from a small animation firm, as it turned out), I didn't actually consider power, assuming that 4 ATA drives would draw less.