Looking for an enclosure for a SATA drive

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Level 1

81 points

Looking for an enclosure for a SATA drive

I need an enclosure to put this SATA drive into: WD Caviar Black WD1001FALS - hard drive - 1 TB - SATA-300.

I already have three enclosures for 3.5" IDE drives. Will it go into one of these? Or do I need an enclosure specially for SATA?

I'd like to be able to plug it into the FW400 port on my computer, but all the enclosures for SATA seem to be USB 2. Will this suffice - I want to install two operating systems on this drive and to be able to boot into them?

My computer is a PPC G5 dual 2.3

Apple Mac G5 DC2.3, Mac OS X (10.4.4)

Posted on Sep 4, 2009 3:15 PM

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Answer 1

japamac

Level 7

24,400 points

Sep 4, 2009 4:19 PM in response to Tim York

HI-

The SATA drive won't install into a housing for IDE drives.
You need a housing for a SATA drive.

A housing Like This will provide you with many interface options, but, most importantly, has firewire for reliable boot.

This housing provides good connectability for a good price.

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Answer 2

Tim York Author

Level 1

81 points

Sep 4, 2009 11:17 PM in response to japamac

Thanks japamac..

'has firewire for reliable boot'
Can I boot into another OS via USB2, or is that unreliable?

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Answer 3

japamac

Level 7

24,400 points

Sep 5, 2009 12:01 AM in response to Tim York

Hi-

Not all machines work well with boot to USB 2.0 external drives.
It also depends on the chipset of the external enclosure as to whether or not boot is supported.
Because of this, it is recommended to stick with firewire for bootable externals and PPC Macs.
Firewire is guaranteed to boot, and is faster/more reliable in data transfer than USB.

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Answer 4

The hatter

Level 9

61,031 points

Sep 5, 2009 3:36 AM in response to Tim York

That $39 case is something I hadn't seen on OWC before.

If you want to really run your system off that drive, great drive by the way, and fast, 3x faster than USB and 2.5x faster than FW400, and even FW800 will hold it back.

Which is why I would look to spend more and get an SATA PCI (Express I believe) that is bootable, and run the drive at native SATA performance levels.

That would mean a case with SATA-only (ideal) or FW800/400/eSATA.

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Answer 5

ljb0655

Level 1

0 points

Sep 8, 2009 12:45 PM in response to Tim York

my 12 inch powerbook laptop body was no good, but the hard drive was. I had a powermac g4 tower with a bad harddrive. After researching, I found this site and I mounted the laptop harddrive into the desktop and boom! my old laptop drive booted up on the desktop powermac. here is the link. a 3 yr old can install this it is way too easy, plus it cost 99 Cents. way cheaper than buying an enclosure.
http://www.b2cshop24.com/en/hard-drive-ide-25-to-35-adapter-converter-for-laptop .html

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Answer 6

Sep 8, 2009 2:16 PM in response to ljb0655

For a G5 that uses SATA drives, you'd need another adapter on top of that, to go from PATA to SATA. In a G4 or older, it'd likely work just fine, as you said.

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