[jamiemcf]

Basically my question is can I buy a 3.5" internal hard drive and put it in an external enclosure? I'm looking to buy a large capacity drive (750GB for £130) to use for back ups and all the external hard drives are way more expensive.

[CharlesS]

Yes, most definitely. In fact, this is the recommended way to get an external hard drive. Just make sure that you get an enclosure that matches your type of drive - serial ATA or parallel ATA. Also, if you want an enclosure with FireWire on it, look for one that uses the Oxford chipset. Avoid FireWire enclosures that don't list the chipset they use.

[jamiemcf]

Do you mean my type of drive that is in my Macbook? It's a serial ATA.

[CharlesS]

No, I mean the internal hard drive that you are going to put in the enclosure. If the hard drive is serial ATA, then you need an enclosure that takes a serial ATA hard drive. Same for parallel ATA. Just make sure you get the right kind, and you're fine.

[jamiemcf]

Any advantages/differences to Serial/Parallel?

[mfbernstein]

Serial ATA is typically slightly faster, and cheaper, as parallel ATA is being gradually phased out. Unless you have a particular need for PATA (old drives, old machine that you're pulling a drive from, etc.), go with SATA (and make sure the enclosure you get supports it). Unless performance is a big issue, an enclosure with FireWire support isn't necessary (will gain you about 20-30% over USB) and tends to cost a fair bit more.

[CharlesS]

One thing I've got to say about FireWire support is that while it isn't really necessary on Intel (other than the slight speed gains), on a PowerPC, it's quite nice to have, as PowerPC Macs can be booted from FireWire, but not USB 2.0.

Serial ATA is indeed faster than Parallel ATA, but that doesn't really matter, because both FireWire 400 and USB 2.0, and even FireWire 800, are slower than Parallel ATA. Obviously, if you want to connect via eSATA, you'll need the enclosure to be Serial ATA, and Serial ATA can also be nice because that is what modern computers use, so you could swap out your MacBook's hard drive (assuming you get a 2.5" enclosure rather than a 3.5") and put it in the enclosure at some point. Otherwise, Parallel ATA is just fine for an enclosure, and PATA enclosures tend to be a lot cheaper. Basically, it depends on the drive you want. Just make sure the enclosure is compatible with the drive.

[mithridain]

One of my current external hard drives just died. I want to replace it with a serial ATA hard drive and get a new enclosure, or buy an all-in-one (enclosure that comes with a hard drive). I want something large like 750GB-1TB. My friend recommends Seagate drives because the Barracuda drives have a five year warranty.

I like using Firewire 800 (or 1394b) but I also want USB 2.0 in case I need to hook it up to a Windows box. The enclosure is going to need to support at least both of those.

Any recommendations for hard drives, enclosures, or all-in-ones?

Oh, and one more thing. CharlesS wrote that PowerPC Macs can boot from Firewire drives. Has that changed for the Mactel systems (i.e. is it still possible to boot a Mactel system using a Firewire external drive)? While my current laptop is a Powerbook G4, I do plan on updating eventually to a MacBook Pro. I clone my internal hard drive to external ones as I sometimes need to boot from them.

[CharlesS]

Intels can boot from anything.

PowerPCs can only boot from FireWire.

I have this enclosure, and like it. But it's expensive. There's also this one, which is a little less (but PATA). Someone mentioned this one in another thread, which looks awesome. And then, of course, there's also this one, which comes with a FireWire and USB hub as well.

Note that these are all 3.5" drives (as you specified in your initial post). They will not be compatible with the hard drive from a MacBook. For those, you would want a 2.5" enclosure instead. The one thing to remember is that you want the FireWire chipset to be Oxford, and you want to avoid Prolific (for the USB chipset, it isn't supposed to matter as much who makes it).

[mithridain]

Great! Thanks! I had no idea that the Mactels could boot from USB.