[bluric]

Hi, new here to the forums.

So I have an old 100 Gig USB drive (from xtradisk.com) that I bought a long time ago that a friend told me I could actually put into a Firewire enclosure, and magically, it would be a Firewire drive. Can this be done? The drive itself sits in a rather large plastic enclosure, so I assume one could take it out, but how does this even work?

So would I need a Firewire enclosure and a Firewire interface or something?

Also, it's formatted for Mac and has a specific driver to make it work. Would it need this driver if it could be switched to Firewire?

Also, just noticing LaCie's site, I could get a decent 80gig for 199...what would you do?

Thanks a lot!
- Rick

[tooki]

Inside any USB or FireWire hard drive sits a normal internal ATA hard drive. You can indeed take that internal drive and move it to a different enclosure, or into a computer.

Since Mac OS 9.1, drivers are not needed for FireWire hard drives.

tooki

[SSharon]

what tooki said.
and about that lacie drive, its much easier and cheaper to build your own. Just buy an internal ata hard drive and put it in a firewire enclosure, usually you don't even need any tools other than your hands. As for prices, I say 50 cents a gig max (my apt mate bought a 200gb drive for $40 after rebates after thanksgiving) and about $30 for a decent enclosure.