[P1] SOT: Firewire speed and external hard drives?

[Andrew Nye]

On Tuesday, January 14, 2003, at 07:18  am, Richard McKay wrote:

> I bought an external FW housing and HD a while ago (sept. 01) that 
> allowed a
> quite fast transfer rate for the time, and it worked brilliantly until 
> this
> week...something must of happened with the electronics because it has 
> now
> fried 2 HD's (original and trouble shooting drive!) on me!

Thanks for this, Richard, cheered me up tremendously! :(

> The major thing I can recommend is that you *read* around if they have
> managed to deal with the cooling problems in the housings yet (there is
> usually very little heat dissipation possibilities because of the wish 
> to
> have a small attractive housing (no ventilation, heat sinks or fans) 
> and
> this more than anything may limit your speed thoughts or cause 
> premature
> death of the drive...

Not too worried about the Formac 60gig, that has a vigourous fan in it, 
but I also have an old but neat SCSI enclosure which did house a 
massive 120mb (sic) drive - it seemed massive attached to my (still 
working) SE30. However, it now houses a 2 gig drive and has no fan. 
Should I worry for this drive?

Andrew