Hardware :: USB Drive Enclosure Recommendations?
Dec 23, 2008
Okay, I've recently re-discovered the 250gb drive that came with my Mac Pro, which I immediately switched out for four 750gb ones. Anyway, I now have need of a new external drive, so my thinking was to simply get a drive-enclosure rather than a whole new external drive. My need isn't urgent, but it's one of those things I really like to have and do find useful from time-to-time, though this may change. My requirements are:Supports 3.5" form-factor, SATA-300 drives, as that's what I've got. Is boot-able, as I'd like to use it as an emergency drive, and possibly install Windows to it, though I may change my mind on that as the procedure looks fairly complicated. I read somewhere that whether a computer can boot from it or not may depend on a chip in the enclosure but I'm unsure how to find out about that. USB 2.0, as while it's not a compact drive I'd like it to be portable. Additionally on this front, being bus-powered would be great, but not an absolute requirement (I'm not incapable of carrying a power-adaptor Just hoping to get any recommendations from people that have bought USB enclosures recently, or otherwise know of some good ones to investigate.
View 2 Replies
ADVERTISEMENT
Jun 5, 2009
I've been looking at a number of different Firewire 800 enclosures to use with my new Mac Mini and I have seen lots of complaints with almost all the enclosures that I have investigated, including the Newertech MiniStack v3 which I thought should be a good one. A recent enclosure I came across that I haven't seen any bad reviews about is the Icy Dock (MB559UEB-1S). I'd like to know if others are using this and what they think about it. The next question has to do with the type of hard drive to put into the enclosure. Is it worth getting a high performance drive, or will the Firewire 800 interface be the bottleneck even with an average speed drive?
View 4 Replies
View Related
Dec 7, 2010
I was thinking of removing my DVD Superdrive and adding a SSD drive. Will I be able to put the DVD drive in an enclosure and use it as an external drive?
View 5 Replies
View Related
Dec 7, 2009
Title pretty much says it all, the superdrive in my Mac Pro has become unreliable. I figured I'd swap it out myself with something from Newegg, but I'm not sure which ones are compatible and am looking for recommendations
View 1 Replies
View Related
Nov 6, 2008
I would like to know if it's possible to disassemble both this: http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage....=1185267958970 and this: http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage....=1185271084002 drive to remove from the casing and put in a Mac Pro. I've seen pictures here: http://www.carltonbale.com/2008/01/w...ing-the-drive/ on how to disassemble the case, but am wondering if it will work in a Mac Pro.
View 9 Replies
View Related
Mar 31, 2010
a new 2-bay external enclosure for back up purposes, but only using 1 bay in it. When I have the need or money, I plan on buying another drive to put in there. The question I have is, when I do that will I have to reformat the first drive to be able to see both of them as one?
View 2 Replies
View Related
Jan 8, 2010
I have a MacBook Pro 15 (2006) 2 ghz core duo, 2 gigs ram, & 100 gig 7200 RPM hard drive. I would like to change the the hard drive out to a larger one, but I'm seeing all kind of reviews & I'm not sure which ones to put more weight on. I have been looking at a 320 Gig or the 500 Gig. Looked at the Seagate, WD, & the Hitachi. I want to stay with the 7200 RPM. I also know there can be an issue with the, shock or drop sensor on the hard drives not being compatible with the laptops shock sensor, as well as heat & noise issues. I will state that this is my first Mac since the late 80s. But that I have a several very good friends that are long time Mac users and that have done this type of switch out, so while I know that the switch out is more complicated than some I have good tech support on that side of this switch out.
View 1 Replies
View Related
Nov 28, 2010
I replaced the 250G drive in my imac with a 1T (SATA) drive 2 years ago, but now the 1T drive is close to capacity. I was wondering if anyone had any internal hard drive recommendations for a 2T drive. I have been having some strange problems lately with my imac locking up with only the mouse responding that may or may not be hard drive related. I was using a Seagate drive but I would like to go with someone else.
View 1 Replies
View Related
Jan 23, 2010
My old MyBook Home Premium 500GB drive has over 60000 bad blocks (and only 1/3 of the way through the scan) so I need a new drive. What would people recommend for it? I guess a WD Green 1TB would be OK but will that work in the MyBook enclosure? Any experience out there?
View 4 Replies
View Related
Aug 15, 2009
I am reformatting an internal hard drive in an enclosure to use as a media storage drive. I attempted to reformat the drive and partition it as a Mac OS X Extended however it will not erase the current volume and reformat. The volume on there currently is literally the HD with the old OS and Files and such on it, so am I missing a step in the reformatting process? Do I need to reformat as Free Space or FAT or what?
View 11 Replies
View Related
Sep 26, 2009
I have a WD 500GB My Book - Essential Edition
Is there anyway to determine what drive is inside the enclosure?
View 4 Replies
View Related
Dec 7, 2007
Could anyone recommend an external (FireWire 800) Hard Drive that they're using without issues with a Power Mac G5 (mine is a Dual Processor 2.3)?? I bought a couple of WD My Book Studio Edition but have no end of problems on FW800, and looking around here so is everyone else. LaCies seem to have similar problems, plus my own experiences in selling these and seeing FW ports falling off the enclosure's board, etc., puts me off them. Maxtors seem to have different issues and the new brown and orange Seagates are too fugly to even consider. So, anyone recommend a solution (250-500GB) that works fine with FW800 on a dual PMG5??
View 9 Replies
View Related
Sep 29, 2009
I have a late 2007 150 GB Macbook Black. I'd like to finally backup my data and also use it for games or other storage to play directly from, cause I'm almost out of room on my my Macbook. What kind of portable hard drive do you use, or recommend?
View 14 Replies
View Related
Aug 28, 2010
I went to the applestore and, after purchasing one to one, was turned down for a data transfer from my old macbook pro to my new macbook pro. The "genius" recommended that I buy an external hard drive from newegg and get some screwdrivers and do it myself. So I did, except (I think) he told me to get the wrong kind of external hard drive enclosure and now I'm just really upset because I went through the process and got the hard drive out of the old macbook pro perfectly. What do I need to (re)buy to make this data transfer work?
View 6 Replies
View Related
Sep 20, 2010
I just purchused a Hitachi 500GB Travelstar internal HD to replace the 250GB HD and I have a few questions about the directions on cloning. Do you need a FireWire or USB enclosure for the new drive? Do can you use disk utility or do you have to use a program like carbon copy cloner or super duper?
View 3 Replies
View Related
Sep 28, 2010
I'm looking into getting an external exclosure...should I stick with good old USB 2.0, or look into getting USB 3? Is it too new to get it? Anyone have one they are currently using?
View 5 Replies
View Related
Oct 7, 2010
So, I just got an SSD (vertex 2) and I decided to put it in the optical bay. The videos and instructions looked simple enough. You pull the enclosure straight out. However, I had to pull SO hard. The videos make it seem like it easily slides out, but I literally had to pull as hard as I could. I finally got it out and installed the SSD etc, but has anyone else had a problem with a really "stuck" optical drive enclosure?
Should I take it in for AppleCare?
View 12 Replies
View Related
Nov 16, 2010
im looking for an external enclosure that provides a firewire option for my macbook pro. The reason i am doing this is because my macbook will randomly eject my usb powered one for no reason. I have been reading that firewire does not have this problem. Im only looking for an enclosure as I replaced my stock 320gb hardrive with a 64gb ssd for my main drive. Preferably something in the 30$ range because im a poor college student . Anybody know of a good enclosure to go with?
View 5 Replies
View Related
Aug 20, 2009
This is strange. I have a SATA drive that works when it's in an external USB enclosure but when I put the same SATA drive in one of the bays in my Mac Pro, the Mac Pro won't start up.Specifics:-I've reformatted the drive (with GUID and with Mac Partition Map), with no change in behavior-A different drive in the same Mac Pro drive bay works fine, so it's not the drive bay-the suspect drive in any of drive bay keeps the computer from booting (grey screen, no apple)
View 5 Replies
View Related
Oct 25, 2009
My iMac G5 logic board has died. I am going to get a new iMac 27" core i5 when they become available and want to take my internal hard drive from my G5 and convert it to an external for use as a secondary back up device. I found the ultra ULTA40273 model at tigerdirect.com. Is this a good enclosure?
View 6 Replies
View Related
Dec 28, 2007
I got a great deal on an external HD enclosure. Such a good deal in fact that I bought 2 of them with the idea of putting my two 500 GB SATA drives from my Quad G5 into them ( I'm replacing the G5's original drives with new 750 GB drives). When I received the enclosures I realized that they are wired for the older IDE type drive with the 40 pin ribbon connector. I can't get a refund on the enclosures. Is there a simple way to convert these enclosures to accept SATA drives?
View 1 Replies
View Related
Feb 3, 2012
I just purchased a new 3tb Seagate drive to replace a 2tb drive in an external USB enclosure, I can access, partition and format it using Parallels but can't even see it in Disk Utilities on Mac OS X 10.6.8...?
Info:
iMac (27-inch Late 2009), Mac OS X (10.6.8)
View 6 Replies
View Related
Apr 8, 2012
I have bought a caddy from ebay some time back to replace the optical drive with ssd. It worked great. Here is my current configuration: SSD is in optical driveStock hard drive stays same as it was Now I am planning to upgrade SSD and install the drive in the place of stock hard drive instead of in optical drive (to take advantage of higher speed). But the stock hard drive doesn't fit in to the caddy that i bought. It worked great for SSD, but not the internal hard drive.
1) Can someone recommend suitable caddy model, (hopefully cheaper one). Or if i take out the screws from hard drive, it may fit into the caddy that i have.
2) My admin user is configured in SSD, which should not have any problem after migration. But my regular user is in stock hard drive.
Info:
MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.8)
View 1 Replies
View Related
Jun 30, 2012
So I have a sad story to tell...I think my processor or logic board was on its way out when I installed Ubuntu on a partition of my Late 2006 iMac (Intel-based). A few days later the symptoms were getting worse, and for whatever reason ended up re-installing Ubuntu. I think I may have accidentally (don't laugh!) chosen the wrong partition when I did that, because the last thing I remember seeing when I tried to reboot was that I had a choice between two windows partitions to boot up. (Ubuntu shows as a Windows partition on the mac). It was about that time that I think the processor got worse, because after that point, I could never even get to the partition screen. (Just the white screen of death)
I didn't want to do a system restore if that's even possible, because that would lose all my data. My friend told me something about how if I put the drive in an external enclosure, attached it to my PC, formatted it as something I can't remember (that doesn't lose the data) and then run Recuva software to peal through the layers to get my data. I am not sure that I am explaining the process right, I am going to have to ask him again precisely what he was suggesting.
So I opened it up, took the hard drive out. I tried to unplug my CD drive on my desktop PC and plugged the wires into that drive (since I didn't have any extra plugs in my cheap desktop), but the drive didn't exist when I booted up. Besides, the next time I booted up, my PC's mouse and keyboard wouldn't work. I had to unplug the (mac) hard drive, then unplug a few devices to get them to work again. So it is apparent I need an external enclosure for this drive. It is Seagate ST3250824AS, Barracuda 7200.9 250GB SATA 3.5 drive. The reason I am confused about which enclosure to get is that most drives seem to only have two places to hook up wires, but when in the imac, this drive had the two on the end and one on the side. I don't know what is what. So will someone please save me from myself and give me some advice that won't cost me an arm and a leg? I don't think I need the drive to be bootable, I just want to get my data off of it, if any exists.
Info:
iMac
View 2 Replies
View Related
Aug 6, 2009
So the time has come that I bought a 5D Mark II and have begun editing a lot of HD footage, and my Mac Pro's current hard drive setup will not suffice. My current setup: Bay 1 = WD Raptor X 150GB 10,000RPM (OS, Final Cut Studio 2, Adobe CS3, etc) Bay 2 = Apple-supplied WD 320GB 7200RPM (Music/iPhoto libraries, small Windows partition) Bay 3 = Samsung Spinpoint 500GB 7200RPM (Media dump/scratch disk for editing, as well as my spillover Applications folder, etc) Bay 4 = Empty I'm looking to revamp this setup, as I'm struggling in many ways. First off, my main boot drive being the Raptor 10,000RPM was a dumb idea. Yes, it is faster, but I can't install the full OS X, FCS2, CS3 packages and my regular cornucopia of apps without leaving ~1-5GB free. I feel that this kills any speed gain because the drive is full to the brim, and for such a minimal speed increase I'm working with a very very low ceiling of free space. I'm considering ditching this and going with a bigger 7200rpm drive so I don't have to worry about running with a filled up drive again. Here's my idea. I was thinking of getting a 1 or 1.5TB 7200RPM drive to run the OS on and also store my footage, keep all my applications, downloads, etc. Then I could move my 150GB Raptor X out to bay 4 and make that my project scratch disk for video editing(not sure it'd be big enough for larger projects). And then if I had any money left, I would axe the 320 and put another 1TB in its place. Or I could save money and get that new nVidia card for the Mac Pro (I still have the stock HD2600).
I boot windows and play games, but rarely. Would this upgraded video card help with video editing or rendering effects significantly enough to justify the ~$400 pricetag? Or should I save my money and buy camera equipment? More importantly, any recommendations for the quickest/most reliable 1-1.5TB drive out there? or should I avoid them? I don't want to spend a ton of money so I'm not looking to do expensive RAID setups or anything, i'm not editing uncompressed.
View 10 Replies
View Related
Aug 28, 2010
ive been reading macrumors for years now but this is my first time on the forum,with that out of the way i have a questioni need to buy a new hard drive enclosure as my old one is damaged,in the new enclosure i would like a fan, and it should be decent looking.i would also like the ability to have room for 2 disks, incase i were to add another in the future with storage going for beans these days.
View 1 Replies
View Related
Oct 21, 2010
I'm about to buy a MBA, and will need an optical drive to go with it. This will need to be a BluRay Burner. I actually like the idea of an external drive because then I can share one drive among all my computers.I've been waiting for external burners to really hit mainstream, but that hasn't happened yet. It's only now that internals are becoming easy to find. Because I have a lot of store credit, I'd like to get this from Best Buy, but they only have internals in stock. I've contemplated getting an internal and using an enclosure
View 2 Replies
View Related
Apr 22, 2008
I've got a drive in my iMac G5 that I'd like to put into an external enclosure instead. Would I just need a 3.5" SATA enclosure or should I be looking for something more specific?
View 3 Replies
View Related
Jul 23, 2009
I just got a new hard drive for my Black macbook 2,1 and no i need a good external hard drive to put my old hard drive. Do you guys have any recommendations, I'd like to get something that has firewire and usb.
View 3 Replies
View Related
Jul 1, 2010
Okay so I'm thinking of putting a Intel SSD in my MacBook Pro 13" as soon the next generation is launched thus removing the SuperDrive in order to fit both drives. I haven't used it a lot of times but a few times I do need it and that's why I'm now asking this question.
What external DVD enclosure will work with the MBP SuperDrive if any and how will i eject the DVDs. I'm not going to shell out a 100 bucks plus shipping to Sweden for the MCE Optibay so that's out of question, however cheaper ebay alternative that ships to Sweden with reasonable shipping is okay.
Also while I'm here. I've been thinking about upgrading to 8GB ram kit however a friend of mine told me any ddr3 sodimm ram won't work which sounds weird but to be safe I'm asking if that's true? I'm thinking of buying a Corsair 8GB(2x4GB) 1333MHz kit.
View 3 Replies
View Related
