I could not find the 'Coolgear' case in Australia so I ended up getting a Sarotech 'Hardbox':

http://www.mwave.com.au/newAU/mwaveA...p?sku=16040174

...looks like the same case, basically. I wanted to be able to carry it between home and work without lugging an external power supply around, plus have connectivity flexibility and it had to accommodate a SATA drive. This one includes FW800, eSATA and USB2.

It also came with a carry bag, and four connector cables:
- USB2
- FW800 9pin-9pin
- FW800 9-pin-FW400 6-pin
- eSATA

...so I can still use it on a FW400 connection as well. As you just plug a standard 3-pin 'D' power cable straight into it, I can just leave a spare one at home and work and not worry about carrying one around. Noice.

Can any one give the short pros and cons of different HDDs? like, what is the pros and cons of:
IDE
ATA
PATA
SATA

and what kind of enclosure limitations are there for each type?

I'm actually in the midst of doing exactly that - to clear all confusion out of rocket science, and back to a nice clean dummies mode, on types of Hard Drives and what one needs / wants out of these confusing acronyms - will have a thread put together for next week.

To simplify a bit, generally speaking:

IDE = ATA = PATA

SATA is a newer standard:
- Faster interface (though the limiting factor is usually the drive itself)
- Thinner cables

These just refer to the interface (ports) - mechanically the different types of drives are pretty much the same.

In short, if your machine supports SATA, that's the way to go.

so I have come to the conclusion that i want an enclosure with SATA interface, with a firewire 400/usb2 interface at a minimum. I also want it fanless, but reliable. Any particular reccs?

How about this one for $199?
HardBox(M) portable Hard Disk Drive USB2.0, IEEE1394 and SATA ports 250Gb with carry case

I've got two 500GB sata drives I would like to use as a single external 1TB drive (attached to an iMac as an external back to a 1 TB internal sata drive).

Most solutions seem to run to at least $210 eg SATA Xpress Dual Bay. HAs anyone had any experience with Vantec NexstarMX Dual HDD Enclosure - which seems to come in at around half this?

Taurus RAID are a good solution for twin SATA Drives to add up to 1TB - see this article right under SATA Xpress Dual Bay Triple - coming in at around $250.00 including GST, a 2 year warranty and postage & handling.

Taurus RAID comes in two models:

• Triple Interface: FW400 / (x2) FW 800 / USB 2.0
• Taurus LAN: 10/100/1000 Base-T LAN / USB 2.0

cw

Suggest one takes a look at the Icecube Generation II Pleiades Enclosure series, at around the $170.00 mark, inc GST, 2 year warranty and postage & handling.

See fully visual article here - just under Daisycutter Enclosure - fifth model Icecube down.

cheers,

cw

I recommend any LaCie rugged drive.

CLEAN TANGERINE!

The only 2.5" Enclosure that has a casing slightly thinner than a chocolate wrapper... uh huh - open it, and be shocked. Also, nuthin' holding the HDD in place, cept for four little lose rubber blocks - one little knock, and the Rugged pushes up the daisies.

Go Clearlight!

Hi folks,

I am shortly to become a mac user for the first time as soon as I order a shiny white macbook to replace my dead windows desktop.

My wife will still be running windows and I want to setup a network drive for media (mainly photos) storage and backup that will be accessed by both computers. From reading these forums & getting some advice, I suspect I will be looking at either the Taurus LAN or LaCie 2Big Network with 2 x 500gig, using RAID 1.

Any comments about the relative merits of these would be appreciated, or anything else that I should be looking at without going much above the price of these two.

jonathan
who is getting rather giddy at the prospect of finally owning a mac

I've just put together a Taurus Lan with two mirrored 750 gig WD drives. Had a few interesting moments with it. I'll write up a bit of a review when I get a chance. Any specific questions about it?

Cheers

About the Taurus specifically - what's the noise like? Also, will it be ok on a network shared by windows & mac? I'm still new to all this network guff so feeling my way a bit.

Other than that, I was curious about any comparison between the two. After posting I realised that the Taurus would give me the option of whatever drives I want to put in. With the LaCie I just take what they give me.

Just a warning on drives with the Taurus. I bought 2 Samsung 750 gig drives from the same person I bought the enclosure from. The enclosure failed to recognise them. Put them in a PC and they formatted OK. Back in the taurus - nothing. A friend lent me two 500 gig WDs to try and they worked fine. There was no reason we could think of why it wouldn't work - it just didn't.

Took the Samsungs back and replaced them with Western Digital 750 gigs and they worked fine. Go figure.

Wow. Thanks for the tip. If I do go with the Taurus, might stick with WD.