FireWire enclosure

[sanfrancisofont1984]

A 80GB SATA spin drive is recently taken out from an Intel mini. I wonder should I just pick a FireWire 400 enclosure and use it as an alternative to dual-layer DVD+RW (if such a thing exists).

 

[Amethyst1]

Definitely feasible. If you can only find Firewire 800 enclosures with SATA inside, a simple adapter/cable will do the trick.

 

[fiftysixk]

I use this with a firewire 800 to 400 cable. Its really handy having USB 3.0 too. I have used it on an iBook G3 with firewire 400, PowerBook G4 with firewire 800 and my Intel Macs using USB.

 

[r6mile]

I have a few Lacie Rugged Triple drives, that do Firewire 400/800 alongside USB 3.0 or 2.0, very happy and never had any issues. Not sure they're manufactured still, so you may need to buy second hand.

 

[bobesch]

I have a few Lacie Rugged Triple drives, that do Firewire 400/800 alongside USB 3.0 or 2.0, very happy and never had any issues. Not sure they're manufactured still, so you may need to buy second hand.

Yep, I can chime in. LaCie also made FireWire/USB-drives prior to the rugged-ones. You may find them at 20-30bucks including the spinning drive (which is BTW bigger than your 80GB drive).

 

[sanfrancisofont1984]

The OWC one is future proof (Catalina removed FireWire boot support from a support article I saw) but I would probably pick up an used FireWire 400 only one.