OWC Mercury Elite Pro -AL Dual SATA Drive Enclosure:

For backup, maybe. For two drives doing FCP as scratch, get a better quality dual-drive enclosure. Heat, ventilation, etc are going to shorten a drive's lifespan.

I use OWC's Quad SATA/FW800 for a single drive and even that gets warm doing a full 150GB copy. Look into SeriTek products, read the reviews on AMUG for SATA.

Even with a 4-drive enclosure you sometimes want to leave one drive bay empty for cooling. I might choose that enclosure for just one good 500GB drive (FW800 and SATA enclosures can run $89-109 per drive).

Your enclosure requires a PCI controller. The ideal is SeriTek PCI-X and 2-drive case, but for about $289 OWC.

The G5s have a history of poor FW800 performance. "waste of speed" is a tongue-twister for me. I can get 120MB/sec using FW800 controller + native FW800 with two drives; or 65-70MB/sec for single drive. Those dual drive cases for FW only get 75-80MB/sec because both drives are sharing one channel.

Hatter, do you own this encl. and use it with a 500g?

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other%20World%20Computing/
MEFW924AL1K/

I was thinking about getting a dual encl. so I can get a fan (and also the extra bay when I'm ready.

I was looking at this from Firmtek, but wondered if you have seen better? Can't find much else.

http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/articles/firmtek/2en2/

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Firmtek/SATA2EN2/

Any suggestions?
As always, thanks very much for your words of wisdom.

Mike

PS: Haven't checked the RAM yet.

I've got that enclosure housing two 160 gb drives in a RAID 0 that I use for video capture. It's controlled by this FrimTek card
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Firmtek/SATA1SE2/
I don't have heat problems as the case is well ventilated and the fan works just fine. I don't however leave the drive on 24/7. I turn it on when I need it and turn it off when I don't. I got the case from OWC and the card for something like $40 from a private seller.
I'm very pleased with the set up. I didn't feel the need to spend $300 for an external drive. I don't need hot swapable drives so it works just fine for me.

Hey Mike,

Do you own the Mercury Elite Single Drive enclosure, or, the Firmtek Dual Drive enclosure? The Mercury Elite enclosure link from OWC I attached showed a single drive enclosure. Confused.

Firmtek is the far better enclosure with a fan. Mercury does nto contain a fan. Right?

I own the one the OP was asking about, the Mecury Elite Pro AL Dual SATA
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other%20World%20Computing/MESATATBE/
The dual DOES have a fan.
Check your links again...one was for the AMUG review, one for the FirmTek enclosure and the other doesn't work.

Dual 2.0, 4 GB, 1.3 TB, SuperDrive, 9800 SE, 20 Aluminum - 15 1.5 PB, Mac OS X (10.4.8)

Thanks Mike.

I want to apologize for the appparent "threadjacking". It was inadvertant. I'm new to these groups and haven't quite figured out how to follow up with specific users. I thought the e-mail links would work, but they require one to type in the address in the field. No one shows e-mails in their profiles, so, how does one dothis without jumping into the middle of another thread?.

Anyway, thanks, and sorry to Dina M. as well.

Well, I'm getting a 500 GB SATA drive to make
internal as a second drive. The eSATA drive will
have some older projects on it and be more for
storage and the occasional edit. I was only going to
put one 250GB drive in it.

OK, so I'm doing the same...was thinking about the G-Tech G-Drive Quad. But I don't know anything about hooking it up to my G5. Do I need a separate card or PCI or what? I tried the search, but didn't exactly understand what I was looking for. Where in the "About Mac" will I find out if I need it or not? I already have a 2nd internal SATA (500 GB). Sorry if I sound like a noob...don't know much about upgrading my G5.

Jonathan

If you're talking about one of the OWC black eSATA enclosures like this one...

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other%20World%20Computing/MESATATBE/

and intend to use it as an eSATA RAID....a few caveats.

Firstly, you will have to get a PCI dual-port eSATA controller card, not a single port. When you install the drives, each drive has a SATA cable connecting to it, but not the other. Meaning that each of the two ports on the back are for one drive each, not daisy-chaining...it's effectively two independent drives in one enclosure, not one big one combining the two. What's important about this, aside from the connections, is that you'll be running a SOFTWARE-based RAID, not a HARDWARE-based one in which the casing's internals handle the striping. This will be controlled by your computer...meaning extra work for your computer....and you'll need to get the right drivers to do that. There could be a lot of guesswork with MAC compatability when it comes to those eSATA cards. It will be the computer handling the striping to the two drives, or whatever RAID configuration you want to set up.

Secondly...if you look at the included cables/connectors, you'll notice the two power connectors. Those are the older SATA II (or whatever) power connections, which don't come on all the recent internal drives from WD/Seagate or what have you. Notice the small power connectors on your Mac's own internal drives? If you got a pair of those, that don't include the older/larger power connectors, you won't be able to use them in that OWC enclosure.

So beware. I was looking into this, but really didn't fancy the idea of having to set up a software RAID, so I just went with the Lacie Two Big, which is a true hardware RAID and came with its own eSATA card and drivers for Mac.

PowerMac G5 Mac OS X (10.4.3) Dual 1.8