4 drive enclosure?

[bep207]

I have two WD MyBook Essentials that I need to back up.
I want to take them out of their enclosures and put them and two other drives in a single enclosure
Is this possible?
I have a MacBook Pro and could buy a ExpressCard34 eSATA card if it would be useful.
THanks for the advice
Blake

 

[Makosuke]

4-drive external enclosures do exist, although they're relatively uncommon and often quite expensive compared to single or dual drive ones.

I don't know if the particular version of the MyBook you have uses SATA or PATA drives, but I'd guess PATA. If so, you're going to need an enclosure designed for PATA drives, though it probably won't have an eSATA connection--I'd assume FW/USB, or maybe a network connection if it's a NAS unit (I know Buffalo makes the TerraStation, though I'm not sure if that's available without any drives).

If they're SATA, you're going to need a SATA enclosure, which you'll have to be careful on--a lot of the multi-drive SATA enclosures I've seen have one port per drive, which you won't have any use for since you can only install one 2-port card in your MBP. You'll need one that does port multiplexing, and a card that supports it, which I'd guess is more expensive.