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Advice sought on firewire HD enclosures

R

RoadKill

macrumors regular
Original poster
Dec 4, 2003
101
1
LONDON UK
I have a couple of old but perfect servicable HD kicking about (3.5" 40GB 5200rpm) and am looking to put them to good use with my ibook.

It seems the way to go would be a firewire HD enclosure.

So basically I'm looking for product suggestions with the following features.

Quality- Build and electrical components
Bus Powered and daisy chaining
Looks ;-)
Availabilty in the UK

I also would like to move the disks between, winblows, mac and various *nix flavours. Can OSX mount FAT32 drives?

Oh yeah, I'm a techie but don't know much about firewire other than using my ipod.
 
robbieduncan

robbieduncan

Moderator emeritus
Jul 24, 2002
25,611
893
Harrogate
RoadKill said:
I also would like to move the disks between, winblows, mac and various *nix flavours. Can OSX mount FAT32 drives?
Click to expand...

Not sure about the rest but OSX can mount all sorts of FAT partitions including FAT32. I think it might also be able to mount NTFS, but read only.
 
stoid

stoid

macrumors 601
Feb 17, 2002
4,312
29
So long, and thanks for all the fish!
As long as you have them formatted for the Windows file system, the Mac will be able to handle it. Format for Mac, and Windows gives you the cold shoulder.

And Windows is all about choice, isn't it Mr. Gates. The choice to use Microsoft products!
 
R

RoadKill

macrumors regular
Original poster
Dec 4, 2003
101
1
LONDON UK
So thats the file system question dealt with.

So which enclosures should I look at buying?

should I look for specific chipsets?
 
T

torque2k

macrumors newbie
Mar 16, 2004
4
1
GR, MI, USA
RoadKill said:
So thats the file system question dealt with.

So which enclosures should I look at buying?

should I look for specific chipsets?
Click to expand...
I purchased one of the Argosy 3.5" Firewire/USB 2.0 aluminum enclosures recently, and I really like it! The dual-mode is nice, especially if you use it on both Macs and PCs, as it supports both USB 1.1 and 2.0...

I bought it at PC Micro Store (California) but I'm unsure about international orders. Look for the Argosy brand, though. I'm really happy with it!
 
R

RoadKill

macrumors regular
Original poster
Dec 4, 2003
101
1
LONDON UK
Cool, thanks I will check them out.

USB is not a issue because i consider it a keyboard/mouse connector and fit firewire cards to all the company pc's as a matter of course.

Now if only I could get firewire working on the HP-UX box....
 
sonofslim

sonofslim

macrumors 6502a
Jun 6, 2003
742
0
the oxford chipset is generally recommended. i tried to save a few bucks and bought an off-brand enclosure and had a world of trouble. returned it, bought a box with the oxford and i've had no problems since.
 
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