External 3.5" Harddrive Enclosure Options

[daisu]

I am looking to purchase an external harddrive enclosure to house a 250gb EIDE 3.5" harddrive. I will be using it with a Mac Book Pro's firewire 800 port.

The drive will be used to store video from minidv to be edited with Final Cut Pro.

The best (only) option I've seen so far is the Macally PHR-100ACB Aluminum enclosure. The only problem I've seen with it is that the FW ports seem to die after a few years.

I was wondering if there are any other options that would house the harddrive and give me firewire 800, 1394b, support (or faster).

Thanks

 

[fairnymph]

I had the OWC brand (OWC Mercury Pro Elite Al) enclosure for SATA, but I believe they make one for EIDE drives as well. And they do have fw800.

 

[CanadaRAM]

The best (only) option I've seen so far is the Macally PHR-100ACB Aluminum enclosure. The only problem I've seen with it is that the FW ports seem to die after a few years.

That is not our experience here, the MacAllys have been solid for us and our customers.

Any Firewire 400 drive enclosure can be killed if you make a habit of hot plugging it -- the FW400 jack shell tends to loosen over time, and if the FW400 plug is inserted crookedly into the jack, there can be enough play in the jack to allow the 12V power leads to short to the data leads... that fries the FW chip in the peripheral and.or the Mac.

 

[daisu]

Does the same thing happen with firewire 800 ports?

That is not our experience here, the MacAllys have been solid for us and our customers.

Any Firewire 400 drive enclosure can be killed if you make a habit of hot plugging it -- the FW400 jack shell tends to loosen over time, and if the FW400 plug is inserted crookedly into the jack, there can be enough play in the jack to allow the 12V power leads to short to the data leads... that fries the FW chip in the peripheral and.or the Mac.

 

[daisu]

I had the OWC brand (OWC Mercury Pro Elite Al) enclosure for SATA, but I believe they make one for EIDE drives as well. And they do have fw800.

I looked at their website and found the OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro FireWire 800/400 Drive Enclosure with Oxford912 chipset. Do you have any information (does anyone) about this enclosure?

Do you use eSATA? I have no understanding of the eSATA format.

 

[CanadaRAM]

Does the same thing happen with firewire 800 ports?

Well it could theoretically, but the Firewire 800 port is a different design and is harder to plug in crooked, so I have never heard of it.

eSATA -- you don't have an eSATA port on any Mac. You can use an eSATA drave if you install a PCIe eSATA card (MacPro and Dualcore G5) or an ExpressCard/34 eSATA card (Mac Book Pro). The iMac, Mini and MacBook have no option for installing eSATA connectivity.