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bballe336 · Apr 22, 2009, 08:34 PM

I'm looking to buy an enclosure for 2 500gb IDE drives I have. The only decent enclosure I can find is the OWC mercury elite, which is very nice and does everything I would like. I'm just curious to see if there are any other decent 2+ drive enclosures for IDE drives that have firewire and aren't too pricey?

Thanks for any help, it's much appreciated!

cgc · Apr 22, 2009, 08:46 PM

I have a drive from these guys (CoolDrives). They have a gnarly web site but I really like their product.

bballe336 · Apr 23, 2009, 07:37 PM

A bit too expensive for me, but thanks for the link. I think I'll just get the OWC mercury.

CharlesS · Apr 23, 2009, 08:16 PM

I have an OWC Mercury Elite (although it's just a one-drive enclosure, not two). It's a great enclosure. I don't think you'll be disappointed with it.

ibook_steve · Apr 23, 2009, 09:41 PM

Have you searched Newegg yet?

Steve

indigoimac · Apr 23, 2009, 10:55 PM

I would suggest looking at the OWC Neptune, it's a bit cheaper and, in my opinion, just as well made. It does not have USB2 however, only firewire 400.

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other...puting/NP35FW/

CharlesS · Apr 24, 2009, 02:03 AM

1. The Neptune doesn't have USB 2.0, as you already pointed out. This will make it completely unable to connect to the new aluminum MacBook, as well as any future Macs that lack FireWire.

2. The Neptune also lacks FireWire 800 and eSATA, two ports that are much faster than FireWire 400 and that are available on the Mercury.

3. The Neptune is not as well made as the Mercury, not by a long shot. The thing is made of plastic, which is not nearly as good at heat dissipation as the aluminum that the Mercury is made of.

4. The Neptune uses parallel ATA drives, whereas the high-end Mercury model uses SATA drives. SATA is more future-proof, and the largest and newest drives these days are SATA rather than PATA.

Simon · Apr 24, 2009, 02:57 AM

I'm a big fan of SATA docks because they're inexpensive, they have both USB and eSATA for best performance, and they make swapping or upgrading disks as easy as possible.

This dock will take two 2.5" or 3.5" drives. It comes with the power supply and all necessary cables (including an eSATA bracket). Newegg has it for $70 shipped. Link. There's another one here with dual eSATA ports for $90.

CharlesS · Apr 24, 2009, 03:08 AM

Heh, that one looks kind of like a toaster.

Simon · Apr 24, 2009, 03:35 AM

Originally Posted by CharlesS

Heh, that one looks kind of like a toaster.

Hehe, it also works pretty much that way.

mattyb · Apr 24, 2009, 04:53 AM

I'm wondering if you used a hard drive in one of these for Time Machine, swapped it out if/when it got full and put another drive in, would Time Machine start to throw fits ? This things seem ideal to use as both a TM backup and a clone type backup (no don't try and persuade me that cloning isn't a good thing to do for backups).

Simon · Apr 24, 2009, 05:37 AM

Originally Posted by mattyb

I'm wondering if you used a hard drive in one of these for Time Machine, swapped it out if/when it got full and put another drive in, would Time Machine start to throw fits ? This things seem ideal to use as both a TM backup and a clone type backup (no don't try and persuade me that cloning isn't a good thing to do for backups).

I'm actually using it that way. I pop my TM disk out when I need to troubleshoot other disks. If I want to do a clone I just swap the drives as well. Works fine. TM doesn't mind of the TM disk isn't there for a while. It's just like unplugging an external TM disk.

If the TM disk fills up you can replace it with a larger disk and get TM to continue where it left off w/o losing any TM data. Essentially you just clone the old TM drive to the new one. This page walks you through the process.