Best case for the money - FiW 800 Hard Drive Enclosure

[JoshFink]

I'm looking for a recommendation for a FW 800 enclosure? I'll go out and buy my own 500gb or 750gb hard drive depending on the price.

What I'm trying to figure out is if it is worth it to buy the enclosure and drive separately or buy them together.

Thanks

Josh

 

[ChrisA]

I
What I'm trying to figure out is if it is worth it to buy the enclosure and drive separately or buy them together.

I'm shopping also. If you just need a case that holds one or two drives look at the Mercury line at OWC. Good value. My local Fry's store has the bare drives at good price. The think that makes these cases look good is they have a heat sink and a sturdy aluminum enclosure in the style of the new Apple aluminum look.

What I want is a larger case that holds up to four drives and does FW800. Would be nice if the drive were mounted in slide out trays too. I want nearly silent and bullet proof too. I'm sure a lot of people will be looking for something like this after Leopard's "Time Machine" is out. what Apple does not tell you in their promos is that you will need a backup drive about 2x ot 3x the size of the sum total of all your data to make time machine work well. And over that you may (no, will) want RAID so you can loose a drive and still recover your backup data. For me this means four 500GB drives

Anyone seen a good four-drive FW800 box? I think OWC has the 1 and 2 drive boxes covered

 

[Architect4122]

I've been looking at this one for a long time, I just haven't brought myself to buy it. Also, I would like opinions on it before I do lay down the dough.

http://www.cooldrives.com/dusahadrfi80.html

 

[trlnlty]

depending on how much storage you want..

i was deciding between getting a case+HDD or just getting a ready made one.. and because i only wanted 500gb.. there wasnt much savings in getting them seperately so i ended up getting the OWC one

 

[SSpiro]

Owc.

 

[zioxide]

I've been looking at this one for a long time, I just haven't brought myself to buy it. Also, I would like opinions on it before I do lay down the dough.

http://www.cooldrives.com/dusahadrfi80.html

don't buy from there. that place has awful reviews at reseller ratings

 

[wallaby]

don't buy from there. that place has awful reviews at reseller ratings

Damn, and they had just the enclosures I was looking for. Guess it's gonna have to be a MyBook instead then. No one sells fw800 single enclosures cheap enough to justify building your own.

 

[mrgreen4242]

The pricing on most external drives have dropped enough in the last year or two that buying one "pre-made" is typically a better deal. The only time it's not is when you want, as one poster mentioned, a multidrive setup. Even then, dual drive externals are getting cheaper and cheaper, and dual or more drive enclosures are not as popular so the price stays high.

Basically, I'd say get either a stackable external drive with at least 2 FW ports (so you can chain them all together), OR if you have an old PC or PowerMac case around, gut it and buy a couple of IDE/FW bridgeboards and build a multidrive external tower out of it.