HDD external enclosure's advices ! ! !

[Brodar]

Hello everyone!

My first post here


I was wondering if anyone can help me with finding the right external enclosures for several of my HDD's that I am about to pull out from my machines.

It's about the time for me to upgrade my Mac hardware


So I decided to say good bye to my:
-PowerMAC G4 (877 MHz)
-Power Book G4 (15-inch aluminum)
-Tangerine clamshell G3

but I decided to keep all of their internal Hard Drives, by putting them in external enclosures and using them as "back-up drives".

However, I didn't know that it's a such a project to choose the right external enclosure for each and one of them


I was looking on newegg and tigerdirect, but there are so many options that I don't know where to start?

I do NOT need a PERFECT performance, since I am planing to use these HDDs's as a secondary back up drives (meaning I am planing to buy a BIG external HD as my primary back up drive, and use my 3 "back up" drives as a secondary back up) and I thing that I will use, handle and hook them up occasionaly, not everyday.
I am saying this in a sense that I do not want to spend a fortune on enclosures, but I do need a decent quality and reliability.

Also, I have no idea what kind of drives my internal drives are they?

I see that when choosing the enclosure, one needs to know what size (2.5" or 3.5") are the drives, or what kind (ATA, SATA, RAID, SCSI....) are they.
How do I figure that out, since looking into my hardware profiles, I couldn't locate such informations?

Tangarine has original HDD (3Gb), Powerbook has Hitachi upgrade that the person I bought it from installed in it (93Gb) and Power Mac has also original one (140Gb I think?)

Any guidenance for this project that turn out to be much more complicated than expected?

TIA

Brodar

 

[bluesteel]

hey there. i might be able to shed a little light on the matter.

1. your PowerMac G4 is a 3.5" hard drive, IDE or SATA.
2. your Powerbook G4 and Clamshell G3 are 2.5" hard drives, IDE or SATA.

vantec makes great enclosures: (http://www.vantecusa.com/front/product/index/21)

i've used them for years with 2.5" and 3.5" hard drives and they are great. but you need to decide if you want a FW400 or USB 2.0 enclosure. If I were you, I'd opt for a USB 2.0 enclosure because its the most universal connection on computers these days. find the enclosure you want on their website and then buy from either amazon.com, buy.com, OWC, or newegg.com.

as for knowing if your hard drives are IDE or SATA, here is a picture of what SATA and IDE connections on the hard drive look like. if you don't know anything about this stuff, i highly recommend simply visiting your local computer superstore and bringing your hard drives with you.

hope this helped.

 

[brop52]

I'm going to take a guess and say that those drives are so old that it wouldn't be a good idea to use as a backup drive. As you said the three drives together combine for less than 250GB.

I always recommend OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro for an external HDD. You can buy it with or without a HDD in there but I recommend you just buy one with it already in there as you'll save money that way and plus like I said your old drives are probably too small or too old to use for reliable backup.

 

[bluesteel]

yeah, i WOULD NOT use them for backup either. i thought that Brodar just wanted to get the data off of them to put onto another newer SATA drive.

and i love OWC too. their customer service is awesome too.

 

[brop52]

yeah, i WOULD NOT use them for backup either. i thought that Brodar just wanted to get the data off of them to put onto another newer SATA drive.

and i love OWC too. their customer service is awesome too.

Then why not just keep the original drives in the computers and clone everything to a new external drive and then figure out what to do with everything after that point. It would be a pain to take them out (and impossible) and have just one enclosure as they are all different sizes.

 

[bluesteel]

brop,

yep, makes sense. why even buy an enclosure. didn't think about that one.....lol....i think i need some sleep.

 

[Brodar]

WOW!!!

Amazing!!!

I say this in a reference of a speed and indepthness of your responses



Why keep the drives and buy enclosures?!

Well, First thing is, to have multiple copies of my itunes library and such.

You'll agree that when it comes to back up and archiving, one can never be safe enough! So there are less chances of loosing the data if you have multiple copies of your back ups than only one, right?!

Second, more important, is that I had a problem in a past, because someone hacked my computer that I sold online. A lot or headaches and problems, because someone managed to pull out my personal files, bank accounts, adresses, phonebook etc... (I have no idea how?!??!?!) from my old computer, even though I made sure that HDD is cleared up and cleaned up of all sensitive information before I sold it.
Engineers that were helping me sort out the mess, basicaly told me that it's possible to reach erased files even though you erase or reformat the HD. basicaly, I was told that the only safe way to prevent such theft in future would be to physicaly and mechanicly destroy the drives!



After that experience I had, I did become a bit paranoid I admitt..



Anyway, in case I decide to go with both firewire/USB protocols and possibly it's own AC power supply, do you have any suggestions for an inexpensive model of external HDD enclosure, hopefully some that you have good experience with?

I check out your links...there are so many options

 

[brop52]

Your old drives aren't worth saving. Just back up to a single large size drive or get a RAID setup if you are that anal about having everything on one drive. Just buy OWCs Mecury Elite-AL Pro with 1TB and that will last you a long time. What computer will you be using this for? There is no reason to buy separate enclosures. A backup is by default a second copy of your primary HDD. Both aren't going to fail at the same time unless it is stolen. Only way to prevent that is to backup online too but I think you are worrying too much about it.

 

[bluesteel]

Other World Computering (OWC) has great customer service and a good choice of enclosures to choose from:

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/hard-drives/External-Enclosures/

i like Vantec and OWC branded enclosures when i'm on a budget and even when i'm not. but i'm sure there are many other decent brands out there. you can buy Vantec enclosures at NewEgg, Amazon, Buy.com, Mac Mall, PC Mall, etc, at pretty much any online computer store. here is a link to Vantec's enclosures:

http://www.vantecusa.com/front/product/index/21

i can tell you that i just bought this Vantec NexStar CX aluminum 3.5" SATA enclosure for $24.99 at Micro Center last week and it is fantastic. i'm extremely satisfied with it:

http://www.vantecusa.com/front/product/pro_list/76