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Help me understand HD enclosures
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Fresh-Faced Recruit
Join Date: Dec 2003
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Offline
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As a recent Mac convert I have seen that Firewire enclosures are a big thing. Something like the CoolMax CD-309-FW.
If I purchase one of these can I just use the 4 60GB drives I have lying around and swap them in and out for video work?
Thanks!
5by5
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Senior User
Join Date: Jun 2000
Location: Nebraska
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Offline
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Yes you could. Firewire is like USB in that it's plug and play. You wouldn't need to restart your Mac everytime you wanted to switch hard drives. Just format the drives so Mac OS X can read it and when you are ready to swap eject the drive and unplug the firewire cable, put in a new drive, and connect the firewire cable again and your good to go.
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[Riding a circus elephant]
Peter: Look Lois, the two smybols of the Republican Party: an elephant, and a fat white guy who is threatened by change. - Family Guy
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Mac Elite
Join Date: Feb 2001
Location: Houston, Texas
Status:
Offline
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I've been thinking about getting one of those "enclosures" that's nothing more than a USB/Firewire connector cable (no casing) that goes straight to a hard drive for quick/dirty copying of data. Any recommendations?
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Professional Poster
Join Date: Jan 2000
Location: Near Antietam Creek
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You could certainly place any one of you drives into that enclosure, but that case is not hot-swappable (meaning you can't change drives without disassembling the case--though I'm sure you know this  ).
If you want to have access all the drives, you can either purchase 4 cases and daisy-chain them or you could build an external array with a cheap SCSI case off eBay, remove the SCSI cables and interface guts, purchase IDE>FireWire bridgeboards ( FW400, FW 800 or even dual channel).
I've done this because I have had various drives laying around and a 40GB drive still is useful.
Welcome to the Mac, btw.
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Professional Poster
Join Date: Jan 2000
Location: Near Antietam Creek
Status:
Offline
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Originally posted by JHromadka:
I've been thinking about getting one of those "enclosures" that's nothing more than a USB/Firewire connector cable (no casing) that goes straight to a hard drive for quick/dirty copying of data. Any recommendations?
I heard good things about the WiebeTech model:
http://www.wiebetech.com/products/fi...drivedock.html
But it seems that it needs a power adapter--it won't work just from the FW bus.
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Fresh-Faced Recruit
Join Date: Dec 2003
Status:
Offline
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Thanks for the info everyone.
The weibetech device looks exactly like what I need, though it's about 2x the cost of regular enclosure. Of course the regular enclosure isn't swapable.
I thought about making an array but I want to be able to carry whichever drive I need with me when I use the drive with my laptop. Otherwise that would be a great solution.
5by5
(Last edited by 5by5; May 18, 2004 at 02:43 PM.
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