[G4] Assembling a USB Drive

[John Erdman]

> No. It may, but not necessarily -- the controller is quite different. 
> (FWIW, I've got a couple of IBM Travelstars, saved when the laptops 
> were upgraded to bigger drives; I put them in some el cheapo no-name 
> USB enclosures from the corner grocery and they work just fine with 
> both Mac and Win.)

Alex's note  is encouraging!  Actually this combo, down to the No-Name 
USB enclosure is exactly what I had in mind.

So I plan to proceed along these lines. Now one more issue is the power 
available in the enclosure. I assume that like other USB devices the 
drive will be completely powered via the USB link.

	I did read somewhere that I have to pay attention to the fact that 
some drives particularly the higher rpm ones draw more current and 
perhaps generate more heat which isn't dissipated in the enclosure. The 
article said that drives up to 4200 rpm are OK but the higher capacity, 
faster ones may be too much.  I wouldn't miind finding a 60 0r 80 GB 
drive that will work in my enclosure but they all seem to run at the 
higher rpms. I'd like to check power requirements.

I find that my Keyspan USB card will supply 500mA per port. But after 
about 30 mins with Google I haven't been able to find power 
requirements of the IBM TravelStar drives. Lots of other data, just no 
info on the power reqmts.  Any suggestions as to where I might find 
them on the net?

Thanks to all for your help so far.

John
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