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external HDD dock question (internal HDD for external use)

R

rawdawg

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jan 7, 2009
550
111
Brooklyn
A few months ago I bought the NewerTech USB 2.0 Universal Drive adapter. I was going to purchase my first laptop and knew there would be drives I could take from my G4. This was my first real experience with USB 2.0 and boy do I hate it. I do mostly video editing and I very regularly transfer huge amounts of data from drive to drive. USB 2.0 waaaaay too slow compared to what I was used to. Hours to transfer 40Gbs. I now regret not getting a FireWire enclosure.

How does everyone feel about those HDD docks that take SATA drives? To me it seems very economical. I understand a smaller bus powered drive would be good for travel because a dock or larger drive needs a power source.

The problem is my existing drives are PATA/IDE, not SATA. I was going to ask where to find older PATA docks or a recommendation for a PATA enclosure but then I thought I could buy this IDE to SATA adapter and try to use it with a SATA HDD dock so that in the future I'll already have a SATA dock when I need more space and want to get a nice huge 1Tb or 2Tb SATA drive.

Think it'll work? If so, what docks are most recommended? I hope to use this FW800 (or possibly eSATA if I buy a card) with my MBP. Faster is better. Advice?
 
All the docks and adapters I've seen use USB2, so that wouldn't help.

You need a full enclosure to get FW400/800 capability.
 
I'm sure they make PATA docks. Another solution would be to buy a PATA/USB2 cable and a large SATA drive and move the data to the new SATA drive (since they're so cheap these days). This way you're not using SATA drives and your dock and won't need the PATA cable anymore.
 
I have a Vantec NexStar I got from tigerdirect... works great for both 3.5 and 2.5 SATA drives. I use it when I need to swap drives, back up stuff, and don't have time to fumble around with bolting the drive into an enclosure.

Only problem is that it is bulky, and requires a 5V DC adapter. I'd rather have something that is USB bus powered.
 
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