External enclosure for powerbook G4/400 titanium hard drive

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External enclosure for powerbook G4/400 titanium hard drive

I apologize if this has been answered recently. I see only threads from 2006-2009 time period on this topic. I have an old-old Powerbook G4/400 titanium that no longer powers up at all. I'm guessing it's the motherboard, and it's certainly too out of date now to be worth repairing. I am hoping to remove the 40GB IDE hard drive and be able to use it in an external case. My question is, can anyone recommend an affordable external case that works well with this vintage of hard drive? The specs say it's Ultra ATA/66, which I think is the same as ATA-5. I'm guessing they don't make firewire exclosures anymore, so USB 2.0 or 3.0 is my only bet. (I have USB 2.0 but not 3.0 on my iMac, but assume 3.0 is backwards compatible.)

Thanks!

PowerBook, Mac OS X (10.6.8)

Posted on Apr 17, 2014 3:43 PM

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Answer 1

Apr 17, 2014 3:45 PM in response to kaltwach

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

They should have what you need.

Allan

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Answer 2

kaltwach Author

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Apr 17, 2014 4:28 PM in response to Allan Eckert

Thanks for responding, Allan. I'm seeing only Serial-ATA / SATA enclosures listed on that page... I've read SATA is not backward-compatible with the older ATA/IDE hardware. This is part of why I'm a bit nervous about ordering something online that I don't fully understand.

Thanks

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Answer 3

Apr 17, 2014 4:33 PM in response to kaltwach

Try http://eshop.macsales.com/item/MacAlly/PHR100NDAS/

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Answer 4

kaltwach Author

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Apr 17, 2014 10:52 PM in response to Allan Eckert

Helpful, but that one says 3.5" and I'm assuming the powerbook drive is 2.5".

Here are two instances of what sounds like the closest thing I can find online:

http://amzn.com/B0006BGV2Y

http://amzn.com/B000FNBYKW

They both sound like they should work, and since I don't plan to do a lot with the drive, it doesn't matter to me if the cases are not durable or don't have good heat management. Guess I may have answered my own question.

Thanks!

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Answer 5

K Shaffer

Level 7

34,966 points

Apr 17, 2014 11:52 PM in response to kaltwach

There is another way to utilize an older drive to try & extract

information files or old data from it; you could consider the

use of a Universal Drive Adapter (IDE, PATA, etc) to do so.

This one says USB3.0, is backward compatible to USB2.0.

•NewerTech Universal Drive Adapter (Mac/PC/USB3.0)

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/NewerTech/U3NVSPATA/

The information about this drive on the page linked above

suggests it could be a viable tool to use with the bare HDD.

And the universal kit can be used with several types.

Hopefully you can get the data off the old computer hard drive.

With a kit such as this, you can also test the HDD to see if

you really want to use it, or bother buying a case for it.

Good luck & happy computing! 🙂

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