Ultimate Firewire Enclosure?

[displaced]

Hi,

I might be asking for the moon on a stick here, but does anyone know of a firewire drive enclosure which has these features:

• Uses 3.5" drives
• Is bus-powered (i.e. doesn't require an external power supply)
• Optionally, has a second firewire port for daisy-chaining more devices
• Isn't beige

I'm after something to go with my MacBook Pro. I'm really keen on it being bus-powered. Also, I'd really prefer a bare enclosure without an HD. I've already got one to go with it. Any ideas?

 

[Othello]

Can't help you on this sorry, I'm still on a seemingly neverending quest to find a firewire enclosure that will accomodate SATA drives(why is it so difficult, you get ide to usb, ide to fw, sata to usb, wiebetech to a 'cabled adapter' but that's £299.00, gimme a break)

 

[robbieduncan]

I'm not sure you'll ever find one. Most 3.5" (i.e. standard desktop drives) require more power to spin up than FireWire can provided. Once spinning they take less power but spinup is quite power intensive. The bus powered drives I have seen have all been based off 2.5" laptop drives.

In terms of SATA->Firewire stuff like this exists although it's more of an external dock for caddied drives...

 

[yippy]

I am 99.5% sure that you cannot get a bus-powered 3.5" drive. You will either have to get a 2.5" or deal with a power adapter. However, if you go 3.5" with an adapter I have yet to see a beige one or one that doesn't have a second port for daisy chaining.

 

[Vaphoron]

I know this doesn't really fit your specs but it is my ultimate FW enclosure and I absolutely love it!

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other World Computing/MEFW912AL2/

 

[Angelus520]

I don't have the RAID version but I have two of these that I loaded with Seagate drives and love them. They look great next to my MacBook Pro. You do have to plug them in but you pretty much have to do that with any 3.5" drive.

I know this doesn't really fit your specs but it is my ultimate FW enclosure and I absolutely love it!

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other World Computing/MEFW912AL2/

 

[displaced]

I am 99.5% sure that you cannot get a bus-powered 3.5" drive. You will either have to get a 2.5" or deal with a power adapter. However, if you go 3.5" with an adapter I have yet to see a beige one or one that doesn't have a second port for daisy chaining.

I found one 3.5" enclosure which was bus-powered, but it was only guaranteed to work with desktops and was only available with a drive. Plus, it was expensive!

I've instead picked up a few MacAlly accessories from eBay (from a shop, all new units). Got a 2.5" bus-powered enclosure with 2xFirewire 400 and a USB2 port. Also went for a mini optical mouse and a retractable firewire cable. I'll make do with a 60GB 2.5" drive I have spare, and wait for 2.5" drives to drop in price eventually.

Next on the list for this lil' MBP is a decent bag!

Thanks for the input, everyone!

 

[rasjunk]

Does anyone know where to get the OWC enclosures in the UK? The estimated shipping was $66..

 

[Keebler]

esata enclosure

Hi,

i was once in a search for more storage space. i ended up buying, after oodles of research, an addonics storage tower and an esata pci card from sonnet. popped in 2 500 GB HDs and now, i have oodles of space.
the beauty is that the HDs are seamlessly on my screen...it's as if the HDs are truly inside my G5.
I believe the addonics tower can adapt to ide HDs as well.

http://addonics.com/products/raid_system/ast4.asp
it says raid, but you can adapt it a number of ways.

I would highly recommend getting an esata enclosure for the following reasons:
much faster than FW
more cost effective in the long run: you might pay more up front, but in the long run...way cheaper -
the addonics tower is about $150 i believe which is still cheaper than most externals
the pci cards are pretty cheap (b/n $100 and $200)
coupled with the low cost of internal HDs
i have 2 HDs and room for 2 more.

now, i don't know if this works with the macbookpro, but i'm thinking they must have a card to do so and it might be bus powered, although, as techie as i may be, i'm not clear of what bus powered means. it probably means requiring/using a pci card which is connected to the motherboard?

 

[Spectrum]

Hi,

I might be asking for the moon on a stick here, but does anyone know of a firewire drive enclosure which has these features:

• Uses 3.5" drives
• Is bus-powered (i.e. doesn't require an external power supply)
• Optionally, has a second firewire port for daisy-chaining more devices
• Isn't beige

I'm after something to go with my MacBook Pro. I'm really keen on it being bus-powered. Also, I'd really prefer a bare enclosure without an HD. I've already got one to go with it. Any ideas?

This is what you want.
But it isn't cheap. And it weighs 5lb.

I ended up getting the new 160GB Seagate 2.5" in an OWC enclosure:
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/on-the-go
Similar price - but guaranteed to work on a laptop, and the drive itself only weighs 10oz.

 

[baby duck monge]

Thishttp://www.wiebetech.com/products/ultragbplus.php is what you want.
But it isn't cheap. And it weighs 5lb.

That does sound like what he wants, and you're right that it's not cheap (though it's a fairly large drive in there). However, it does not weigh 5 pounds; that is merely the shipping weight, and they usually round those things up to about 5 pounds for anything weighing less than that.

 

[Spectrum]

Hmmm. My mistake. Oh well, I plumped for the OWC solution anyway (for a similar price). It is very small, and I can testify that with mixed file sizes (copying my 43GB home folder with 19,000 odd files in) took just over 30minutes at about 20-25MB/sec over FW800 (with peaks in the 30's). All on battery power

USB2 (which requires a power adapter on this enclosure) looked to take about twice that, but I got bored waiting...

That does sound like what he wants, and you're right that it's not cheap (though it's a fairly large drive in there). However, it does not weigh 5 pounds; that is merely the shipping weight, and they usually round those things up to about 5 pounds for anything weighing less than that.

 

[joshwest]

I know your asking questions on a 3.5, but i would just build a 2.5 enclosure HD. I know they run a little more but for portability and compactness it wins all. Esp if your lagging it around with a Laptop

 

[displaced]

This is what you want.
But it isn't cheap. And it weighs 5lb.

I ended up getting the new 160GB Seagate 2.5" in an OWC enclosure:
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/on-the-go
Similar price - but guaranteed to work on a laptop, and the drive itself only weighs 10oz.

Yeah, that's the only 3.5" bus-powered enclosure I found. Note, however, that they're very careful not to mention that the bus-powered goodness is guaranteed to work on laptops. The spec sheet refering to the bus-powered feature mentions 'on desktop machines'.

So, yeah, I plumped for a 2.5" enclosure in the end and as I said, I'll just wait while 2.5" drives drop in price before getting a large-capacity drive. For the moment, an old 60GB spare 2.5" drive will do!

Thanks all,