Enclose me.
March 3, 2008 7:41 PM Subscribe
Questions about getting an external hard drive enclosure.
I have two desktop (3.5") hard drives that used to live in my old Windows box, until this evening when I brought the old girl to get recycled. I'm now looking for a way to turn them into external hard drives for use with my Mac via an enclosure. I have several questions.
1.) Will the drives have to be reformatted in order for my Mac to recognize them? What about Windows machines? (I prefer not to do this because what little data I have on them is not backed up. It's nothing crucial though.) Could I install one of the drives internally on a different Windows box and have it readable?
2.) I am utterly confused about hard drive terminology. SATA? PATA? IDE? I have no idea what these things mean. Here's what I do know. One of the drives is an 80GB Western Digital Caviar Enhanced IDE Drive. The other is a 300 GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 Ultra ATA drive. I need my enclosure to accommodate either. (FWIW, they appear to have the same exact connectors.)
3.) Any recommendations for enclosures? I've been looking hard at a Coolmax and an Acomdata. I would really prefer some portability though, especially if the enclosure were bus-powered.
Thanks in advance.
I have two desktop (3.5") hard drives that used to live in my old Windows box, until this evening when I brought the old girl to get recycled. I'm now looking for a way to turn them into external hard drives for use with my Mac via an enclosure. I have several questions.
1.) Will the drives have to be reformatted in order for my Mac to recognize them? What about Windows machines? (I prefer not to do this because what little data I have on them is not backed up. It's nothing crucial though.) Could I install one of the drives internally on a different Windows box and have it readable?
2.) I am utterly confused about hard drive terminology. SATA? PATA? IDE? I have no idea what these things mean. Here's what I do know. One of the drives is an 80GB Western Digital Caviar Enhanced IDE Drive. The other is a 300 GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 Ultra ATA drive. I need my enclosure to accommodate either. (FWIW, they appear to have the same exact connectors.)
3.) Any recommendations for enclosures? I've been looking hard at a Coolmax and an Acomdata. I would really prefer some portability though, especially if the enclosure were bus-powered.
Thanks in advance.
1. They will not have to be reformatted to read the drives and get the files off of them. If they're formatted NTFS (odds are that they are), you'll have to reformat the drives in order to put any files on them from the Mac. If you format them as NTFS you can read and write to them from both Mac OS and Windows.
2. Both of those drives are PATA or IDE. Both terms are analogous. If you see an enclosure labeled with either, your drives will work.
3. There aren't a whole lot of bus-powered 3.5" USB drive enclosures. They simply draw too much power for USB to handle, even with two USB connectors. You might be able to find a Firewire one, but I haven't seen one personally.
posted by zsazsa at 8:04 PM on March 3, 2008
2. Both of those drives are PATA or IDE. Both terms are analogous. If you see an enclosure labeled with either, your drives will work.
3. There aren't a whole lot of bus-powered 3.5" USB drive enclosures. They simply draw too much power for USB to handle, even with two USB connectors. You might be able to find a Firewire one, but I haven't seen one personally.
posted by zsazsa at 8:04 PM on March 3, 2008
the Mac is smart enough to read both mac and windows formatted discs. ony windows makes you buy a special program to do this.
look for IDE, ATA or PATA enclosures. SATA will not work.
not sure there are bus powered 3.5" enclosures. do you want to use them as additional drives or just get your stuff off of them? they make non-enclosure cables that will allow you to pug a drive into USB, but they are not meant to be more than a test/recover solution.
it's probably worth it to spring the extra bux for a Firewire enclosure. they're pricier, but much faster.
if it were me, i would get one enclosure, copy whatever from the 80, and use the 300 for music/movies or time machine. 80 is marginally useful, at least for me, and i'm not sure i would buy an enclosure just for it.
i have been assuming you have a new mac. many older macs have PATA built in and probably some empty drive bays as well. what model is it?
posted by KenManiac at 8:08 PM on March 3, 2008
look for IDE, ATA or PATA enclosures. SATA will not work.
not sure there are bus powered 3.5" enclosures. do you want to use them as additional drives or just get your stuff off of them? they make non-enclosure cables that will allow you to pug a drive into USB, but they are not meant to be more than a test/recover solution.
it's probably worth it to spring the extra bux for a Firewire enclosure. they're pricier, but much faster.
if it were me, i would get one enclosure, copy whatever from the 80, and use the 300 for music/movies or time machine. 80 is marginally useful, at least for me, and i'm not sure i would buy an enclosure just for it.
i have been assuming you have a new mac. many older macs have PATA built in and probably some empty drive bays as well. what model is it?
posted by KenManiac at 8:08 PM on March 3, 2008
Whoops, "If you format them as NTFS you can read and write to them from both Mac OS and Windows" should read "If you format them as FAT32 you can read and write to them from both Mac OS and Windows."
posted by zsazsa at 8:10 PM on March 3, 2008
posted by zsazsa at 8:10 PM on March 3, 2008
Response by poster: Thanks so much for the speedy yet high-quality responses!
@KenManiac: The non-enclosure cables sound like a good idea for the 80GB drive, which I do not plan to use regularly. Any idea where I would find those, or what I would search for to find them? Oh, and I've got a Macbook 2GHz Core Duo, so no empty drive bays :-).
posted by dondiego87 at 8:17 PM on March 3, 2008
@KenManiac: The non-enclosure cables sound like a good idea for the 80GB drive, which I do not plan to use regularly. Any idea where I would find those, or what I would search for to find them? Oh, and I've got a Macbook 2GHz Core Duo, so no empty drive bays :-).
posted by dondiego87 at 8:17 PM on March 3, 2008
For drive connections via USB without using an external bay, I use this product at work with Windows and it's supposed to work with Mac X.
posted by jmd82 at 8:37 PM on March 3, 2008
posted by jmd82 at 8:37 PM on March 3, 2008
yeah, what jmd82 suggested would be fine. cheaper than the ones i have seen, to boot. (no pun intended)
posted by KenManiac at 9:47 PM on March 3, 2008
posted by KenManiac at 9:47 PM on March 3, 2008
I have done this a lot. I have a macbook (which I am using to type this), 4 home-built windows machines at home, another old Dell desktop running windows, and at work we do development on Linux and Unix, and (I almost forgot) I run my webserver on a Linksys slug (which used to have a home-built external usb drive, very cheap, but it crashed twice - now I just use flash sticks).
For use with my macbook, I like to have an enclosure with a firewire port, because even though USB 2.0 is theoretically faster, many mac people told me firewire is still actually faster, and after testing with both doing file transfers to my macbook, I found that indeed, firewire is much faster.
To read from both windows and os x, you need to be formatted with FAT32.
I made one external enclosure to use with my macbook only, which is formatted HTFS (the mac formatting native formatting). This was so I could keep files larger than 2GB in length, which turns out if very important when archiving HDTV files from my Elgato EyeTV device. I used a SATA IcyDock for that - you don't want SATA but I really like the IcyDock brand - expensive, but a nice piece of junk.
If you look on newegg.com, you can find some wicked cheap USB IDE enclosures. They work, but I've had problems with drive failures with them, that may nor may not be related. When I say wicked cheap, I mean like $15.
Here's a USB/Firewire external 3.5" IDE enclosure on Newegg that looks decent. I have not done exhaustive research so please look at the other choices. Read the user reviews.
posted by thomas144 at 8:49 AM on March 4, 2008
For use with my macbook, I like to have an enclosure with a firewire port, because even though USB 2.0 is theoretically faster, many mac people told me firewire is still actually faster, and after testing with both doing file transfers to my macbook, I found that indeed, firewire is much faster.
To read from both windows and os x, you need to be formatted with FAT32.
I made one external enclosure to use with my macbook only, which is formatted HTFS (the mac formatting native formatting). This was so I could keep files larger than 2GB in length, which turns out if very important when archiving HDTV files from my Elgato EyeTV device. I used a SATA IcyDock for that - you don't want SATA but I really like the IcyDock brand - expensive, but a nice piece of junk.
If you look on newegg.com, you can find some wicked cheap USB IDE enclosures. They work, but I've had problems with drive failures with them, that may nor may not be related. When I say wicked cheap, I mean like $15.
Here's a USB/Firewire external 3.5" IDE enclosure on Newegg that looks decent. I have not done exhaustive research so please look at the other choices. Read the user reviews.
posted by thomas144 at 8:49 AM on March 4, 2008
Windows and OS X and just abouth anything else can read and write FAT32 partitions. Unfortunately, FAT32 has a ~128GB partition limit on Windows and a 4GB file-size limit.
Windows can read and write NTFS and OS X can read NTFS, which is what your drives are likely currently formatted as. But Paragon NTFS software works to let OS X write to NTFS partitions as well. My brother tried it and it seemed to work seamlessly. You can download a ten-day fully-functional trial or purchase it for $40. I think this software makes the most sense for anyone needing to physically share drives with Windows and OS X machines.
There is also a way to get OS X NTFS writing capability using Google's macfuse. We tried it on my brother's computer but were unsuccessful despite following a two different tutorials and had to uninstall everything (not trivial) to even get the ability to read his external HD back. I definitely wouldn't recommend attempting this unless you enjoy tinkering and troubleshooting.
If you won't be sharing the drives then you can save the $40 and just format them as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) with the Disk Utility. Of course you'd first have to copy the data to another location before formatting and then move it back.
But the easiest solution is to purchase Paragon NTFS and throw the drives in a cheap enclosure.
posted by 6550 at 9:23 AM on March 4, 2008
Windows can read and write NTFS and OS X can read NTFS, which is what your drives are likely currently formatted as. But Paragon NTFS software works to let OS X write to NTFS partitions as well. My brother tried it and it seemed to work seamlessly. You can download a ten-day fully-functional trial or purchase it for $40. I think this software makes the most sense for anyone needing to physically share drives with Windows and OS X machines.
There is also a way to get OS X NTFS writing capability using Google's macfuse. We tried it on my brother's computer but were unsuccessful despite following a two different tutorials and had to uninstall everything (not trivial) to even get the ability to read his external HD back. I definitely wouldn't recommend attempting this unless you enjoy tinkering and troubleshooting.
If you won't be sharing the drives then you can save the $40 and just format them as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) with the Disk Utility. Of course you'd first have to copy the data to another location before formatting and then move it back.
But the easiest solution is to purchase Paragon NTFS and throw the drives in a cheap enclosure.
posted by 6550 at 9:23 AM on March 4, 2008
Had no problems setting macfuse with these instructions. Then if your drives are NTFS, you could not only read but write to them.
posted by sero_venientibus_ossa at 4:46 PM on March 4, 2008
posted by sero_venientibus_ossa at 4:46 PM on March 4, 2008
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by rbs at 8:01 PM on March 3, 2008