Hard drive enclosure for a G5 hard drive
July 14, 2009 8:29 AM   Subscribe

MacFilter: Can anyone recommend a hard drive enclosure for an old hard drive from a G5?

Already ordered a Sabrent EC5-U35K with the assurance from others that "Oh, all the enclosures are the same." But the Barracuda 7200.7 160GB hard drive they took out of my old G5 doesn't seem to match up with the enclosure. Size-wise, no problem, but the enclosure appeared to have a power supply and what looked like an older SCSI female port that in no way matched up with anything on the hard drive itself. Do I need a different enclosure, or is there a third item, something between the two layers I've already got, that that I need?
posted by el_lupino to Computers & Internet (6 answers total)
 
Those both should work together - they're both IDE/PATA. Perhaps they sent you the wrong ribbon cable with the enclosure? Perhaps if you could post some pictures.
posted by nightwood at 8:40 AM on July 14, 2009


Best answer: That enclosure you have there is IDE. All G5 towers have SATA drives in them so you need a SATA enclosure instead of that IDE one. Something like this would work: 3.5" SATA to USB external drive enclosure.
posted by J-Garr at 8:46 AM on July 14, 2009


J-Garr is correct - i read one old review that labeled it as PATA - but that hard drive it is indeed SATA.
posted by nightwood at 8:50 AM on July 14, 2009


Best answer: J-Garr has it right, and nightwood does not. Your G5 tower uses SATA (serial ATA) and not PATA (parallel ATA) hard drives, and you purchased a PATA enclosure. Enclosures aren't all the same; with different sizes, interfaces and external connectors, there's actually a surprising amount of variation.

The Other World Computing SATA enclosures are a little pricy, but they're lovely and are fantastic external enclosures for modern Macs. This one is cheaper and just has USB and FW400 interfaces, whereas this one is pricier but has a bevy of high-speed interfaces. Both should work great with your drive.
posted by eschatfische at 8:53 AM on July 14, 2009


Response by poster: Thanks to J-Garr and eschatfische!!
posted by el_lupino at 9:03 AM on July 14, 2009


I've been using Vantec Nexstar drive docks for external storage. You can get them with USB, Firewire, and/or eSATA interfaces and they'll accommodate drives up to 2 Tb. You can swap bare drives in and out as easily as you would a thumb drive. Their prices are comparable to other enclosures. Caveat: no fan, so larger/faster drives will get hot.
posted by joaquim at 4:54 PM on July 14, 2009


« Older Support for spouse with type II diabetes   |   Panthers vs. Sharks, Blue Jays vs. Cardinals... Newer »
This thread is closed to new comments.