[FW] Trouble with Firewire on External Enclosure with serial ata

[Larry Blodgett]

I am always trying to keep up with the changing technology.  I changed 
as quick as I could to DDR from SDRAM.  Now I am in the process of 
learning and changing from IDE to serial ATA hard drives.  I bought a 
Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 200G SATA/150 drive.  I have since then tried 
to adapt that new drive to my old IDE Macs.  I have little doubt it 
will slip directly into a G5, but I don't have one (someday I will).  
Here is the source of my trouble.  I have bought two adapters which 
plug into the SATA drive and allow my IDE cable to plug into the 
adapter.

If I install it into my G4 the bus only sees 128 G.  That not so good.

If I install it into and external enclosure with both USB2 and 
Firewire, I have mixed results.

Enclosures have different versions of hardware to support the drive and 
adapt it to USB or Firewire,\.

The older versions work just like the G4. (Firewire works fine but 128 
G) (USB1 (ugh) works but 128 G)
The new enclosure (Addonics Model AE5SACSUF) with the Addonics SATA to 
IDE adapter works fine on USB2 but does not work at all on the Firewire 
port.  Hook up to firewire, Disk Utility sees the entire drive (~200 G) 
but when you erase or partition the process hangs.

Does anyone else have any good advice to help me resolve these 
problems?  Maybe this is just a Maxtor problem, I don't know.  Maybe 
this is just a warning to let you know that all the bugs have not been 
worked in the interfaces that support the SATA drives.


Larry Blodgett
lblodgett at mac.com