External Hard Drives

[Gaelic1]

I have an extra SATA Maxtor 250 Gb Hard drive. If I get a SATA enclosure could I also use it on my aging G3 powerbook? I'd like to download items from my G5 powerMac onto the G3. Will it work?

 

[panoz7]

Does your powerbook have a firewire port? If not you're probably out of luck. If so you should be able to buy a SATA enclosure with firewire. There's a few of them out there but they aren't quite as common as PATA enclosures.

If you just want to get a few files off of the G5 you should also consider just booting the G5 in target disk mode and working from there.

 

[puckhead193]

can't he/she use USB 😕

 

[panoz7]

can't he/she use USB 😕

My apologies. I got my mac history mixed up. For some reason I thought that firewire was introduced a generation before USB... it was actually the opposite.

If by chance you have the powerbook that has USB but no firewire then you can use an external USB enclosure but not target disk mode.

If you have the final generation powerbook that has firewire and USB then I'd still recommend that you use firewire. The USB will only be USB 1 and will be considerably slower then a firewire connection.

If your powerbook doesn't have USB or firewire then you're kind of out of luck. You could buy a USB or Firewire card or you could buy a network enclosure for your drive and access it through ethernet. I'm not sure if there are any SATA network enclosures with ethernet yet.

 

[yellow]

If it's a Lombard or before, then trouble.. if it's Pismo or after, then the OP is golden.

Assuming it has a firewire port, just boot into Target Mode (google for it) and hook it up to the G5 with a firewire cable. Poof, it appears on the desktop as an external disk. No need for an intermediary..

 

[Gaelic1]

Hard Drive enclosures

Thanks folks😀 . As always you gave me excellent advice!