20" iMac Late 2006 HDD Enclosure

I had another thread going on this topic, but it involved Tiger, the transition to Snow Leopard, and internal HDD compatibility. Now that I have that all sorted, this question should be even easier.

I've been looking at external drive enclosures and I can't decide which one to get from OWC. My only requirements are bootable via Firewire. I'm going to be putting a SATA drive into the enclosure primarily, but I'd also like to utilize some PATA drives I have sitting around if possible. I have 2 80GB PATA drives that I could put to good use. They have this one http://eshop.macsales.com/item/EZ%20Quest/N52300S/ at OWC that I was considering, but there are two problems. One, the enclosure is primarily PATA, but has an adapter that will go to SATA. I'm concerned about speed loss this way. Two, it is FireWire 800 while my Mac only has 400. I can make this work I believe with the right cabling. Would it be worth juggling all this, or would I be better off just getting one for the SATA and another for PATA?

At any rate, I need help deciding on which enclosure to go with. I'm going from Tiger to Snow Leopard via the Box Set. I'm upgrading my internal HDD to the 640GB WD and want to put the original 250GB HDD in the enclosure. I need to be able to boot from Tiger in the enclosure if needed. I've been researching this all day and it's making me crazy. Help! 🙂

Matt

iMac, Mac OS X (10.4.11)

Posted on Dec 8, 2009 1:00 PM

18 replies

Dec 12, 2009 1:55 PM in response to moze229

As I mentioned before, FireWire seems to be more complex and quality of the brand is more of a factor, from my experience. USB 2.0 seems to be much simpler to implement, and usually works perfectly, even on cheap devices. I used to be a +FireWire snob+, but since I started using a USB 2.0 drive for Time Machine, I have tried other things with it and realized that it work quite well for typical storage purposes.

Any recent FireWire device should not have any compatibility issues. If that drive worked well in USB mode, I think any jumper settings the hard drive itself may have are set properly.

One thing to check is how the drive is connected to power. Make sure you are not using an overcrowded power strip (surge suppressor) or one that is getting too old. You can try connecting it directly to a wall power outlet as a test to see if it makes any difference.

moze229 Author

Level 1

14 points

Dec 12, 2009 2:20 PM in response to Kenichi Watanabe

I did consider power being a factor, since I've read that some enclosures come with adapters that are barely enough to power the drive. Hence, some of the larger drives actually loose just enough power to stop responding properly. However, if this were the case I would suspect the same issues with the USB connection. I've been using the drive very heavily today via USB, and using it right now actually, and I've had no hiccups at all. A few minutes after I tried plugging it back in this morning via FW, IO errors instantly.

I have an exchange coming from OWC, so if that doesn't work then I'll need to go with a different brand enclosure. When the firewire connection ports do work, they are much faster. If we pay for the firewire functionality, it should work 🙂 If not, I'll keep returning them until I get one that does.

Matt

Dec 12, 2009 2:43 PM in response to moze229

Note that OWC's house brands are NewerTech and OWC. The drive you linked to is not an OWC-produced drive; they are only selling the product as a reseller. I'm sure it's a fine product, but it is not an OWC product.

Obviously, if you buy a drive with FireWire, you want the FireWire to work properly. 🙂

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20" iMac Late 2006 HDD Enclosure