cooldrives.com FW HD enclosure fails on G4

[Larry Hutchinson]

I purchased a firewire HD enclosure with removable tray from a
place called cooldrives.com. The following email that I sent to
their support explains my problem:

-------------------------------
Product: removable tray IEEE-1394 firewire Oxford 911 enclosure for PC and Mac users!
http://www.cooldrives.com/retriefiox91.html

Problem: works on Windows machines but not on Mac.

On two Macs, a G4-733 and a G4 dual 533, plugging in the above drive (with
an existing Mac HD), results in no mounting. This is the case with either OS 9.1
or OS 10.3.1. On both machines, other firewire devices including other
firewire drives work fine.

On OS X, choosing about the Mac followed by the More Info...
button and then selecting firewire from the list first lists the
Firewire Bus under Device Tree but after plugging in the drive
and doing a refresh, the profile says No devices found. 

Since I (mistakenly) ordered two enclosures, I tested both with
the same results.


**

Also, On Win2K or WinXP, I have to physically disconnect the cable to
unmount the drive so that another tray can be recognized. I would have
expected turning the key to off would have done this.
-------------------------------

It has been more than a week and I a haven't heard a beep from them
and, frankly, suspect I never will.

I did a bit more testing and found the drive works on a 17" iMac but not
on another G4 we have. So somehow this drive just doesn't work on
G4s. 

Anybody know why or if there is a fix?

Can anyone recommend a similar enclosure where different IDE drives
can be easily swapped in and out?


Larry Hutchinson
WaveMetrics