[X4U] Re: Duplicating?

[Linda]

On 12/18/08 11:35 PM, Jon wrote:

>  Note that the spare 
> drives that many of us have lying around are ATA/IDE drives - parallel
> interfaces - whereas almost all of the available new enclosures are
> for serial ATA drives. Your links are all for SATA enclosures.

Try the enclosures at OtherWorldComputing -- www.macsales.com. They have
quad-interface enclosures, and even if youdon't happen to have a Mac with
FW800 or whatever, it doesn't mean you won't in the future! They have
enclosures to accommodate all kinds of disks -- just call them and ask (or
tell them what you have and they will tell you what works with it), they are
very knowledgeable.

$69 may not be "cheap", but considering these enclosures are openable and
therefore upgrade-able (new disks, bigger disks, swapping disks, etc.), they
are a good investment, in my experience. I'd rather spend $69 on a good,
metal, fanless, openable quad interface enclosure, plus another $50 on a
500GB disk to put in it, than pay $179 for a 500GB external with a plastic
case I can't ever get into. I have several Que!s and Maxtors that you can't
get into, so the whole shebang is useless to me now that the disks have
failed. 

If you head over to the mac os x support Yahoo group, there are guys (who
know what they are doing) who have measured all of the interfaces, and find
USB to be the slowest, no matter the published specs.

Just my 2¢,
Linda