[Gamoe]

I'm starting to require more drive space and I've been thinking about a getting a multi-drive enclosure, like the ones used for RAID configurations. However, ones with Firewire 400 seem to be rare, and of those, ones below $300 seem even rarer. Ideally, I'd want something with more than 2 drive bays, but a dual-drive enclosure is alright if it isn't too costly. I need FW 400, because it is the only sane way to connect a drive to my eMac, and though I plan to upgrade (eventually) to a MacBook, I'd still like to retain backward compatibility with my older Macs. I was hoping you guys could point me in the right direction with your suggestions.

[mduell]

How much space do you need?

In my opinion it makes more sense to buy one to two big drives instead of a bunch of "cheap per gigabyte" drives, since as you've discovered it costs quite a bit to get multi-drive enclosures.

[Gamoe]

Originally Posted by mduell 

How much space do you need?

In my opinion it makes more sense to buy one to two big drives instead of a bunch of "cheap per gigabyte" drives, since as you've discovered it costs quite a bit to get multi-drive enclosures.

I've started to think this myself. Even at the higher FW enclosure prices, I could get a good aluminum/metal FW for $50 -60, but the FW dual-drive enclosures I've seen cost more than five times that much, in which case the former is obviously more than cost-effective.

As for how much I need. I'd prefer another 160 GB or larger to use as a scratch disk for Photoshop, iMovie and the like. Perhaps I'd use it as my backup and use my current backup drive as my scratch disk instead. I'm still not sure whether I should go with an (P)ATA or SATA drive/enclosure, though.

[mduell]

160GB is so far behind the price/capacity curve that it's not even worth considering. Best bang (GB) for your buck ($) is between 320 and 500G (varies by day).

Since you're going to bottleneck it with Firewire anyway, PATA vs SATA is solely a cost issue. The SATA drives are cheaper, but the PATA enclosures are cheaper, so you have to look at the combination price.

320G SATA $90 - 320G IDE $95
400G SATA $120 - 400G ATA $120
500G SATA $150 - 500G ATA $180

$25 Aluminum enclosure with ATA inside and FW400/USB2 outside.

$50 enclosure with SATA and ATA on the inside and eSATA, FW400, and USB2 on the outside.