Need advice on Firewire/USB 2.0 external drives (1 Viewer)

[Vince Maskeeper]

Need to find a USB 2.0/Firewire (Oxford 911 chipset) enclosure that will allow LARGE FORMAT IDE drives to be swapped in and out of a case for Firewire/USB 2.0 interfacing. I need one that supports 150+ gig IDE drives.

I'm wondering if anyone uses these things (maybe at the office?) and have any ideas on reliable brands. We want to be able to change out the drives, so the ones with perm drives mounted inside (Maxtor, BeyondMicro, Buslink) won't do the trick... but we also need to be able map them in DOS (for ghosting)- so then they should be able to run somehow under dos.

Does anyone have any experience in this- or know what the "industry" reliable brand is to use for these. It seems that everyone and their mom makes them, but I've never heard of half the companies (ADS, Dvico, Macally, Addonics, Mace Group, CompuCable) or they have rather low-budget names (Super Speedzter5, FireXXpress, etc)...

It seems like the ADS Pyro drive enclosures are popular- but I have seen some people say they don't support drives bigger than 120gig.

-Vince

 

[Joseph S]

I've never heard of half the companies (ADS, Dvico, Macally, Addonics, Mace Group, CompuCable) or they have rather low-budget names (Super Speedzter5, FireXXpress, etc)...

Mace Group is Macally. Most of these companies use the same Oxford FW/USB bridges and stick them in an enclosure.

Granite digital makes high quality products and I have been very happy with my firewire hot swappable "Smart" enclosure using HDs ranging from 40GB to 250GB. They don't offer a USB 2/FW bridge option on the site, but if you call they probably could do it for you.

I also have had few problems with ADS Pyro and OWC/MacSales Mercury Elite enclosures, however I never tried them with >120GB drives.

Also note that the Firewire 800 aka FW2 aka 1394b / USB 2 enclosures are aleady hitting the market at around $150. (Oxford 922)

 

[Vince Maskeeper]

Do the Granite Digital enclosures offer any low level driver support for DOS?

-Vince

 

[John_Berger]

Try here. I don't know if this is for a specific brand or not, but it might at least be a starting point for you. I hope that it doesn't turn out to be a dead end.

Based on several sites that I looked at, DOS/FireWire is only considered to be experimental.

http://www.summitlake.com/COMPUTERS_...load_coolmenus

 

[Vince Maskeeper]

Well, I'm more interested in USB 2, firewire being a secondary concern-- if I had to pick an enclosure of one type or the other, I'd go USB. It seems IOmagic drives and BeyondMicro drives have dos drivers- but they are fixed drives that can't be changed (or at least not easily).

But thanks for the link- tons of info...

 

[John_Berger]

But thanks for the link- tons of info...

 

[Tony Aguila]

Does it have to have a USB interface? I use a Firewire-only (Oxford 911, ATA6-compatible) solution and it's ideal for swapping drives because there's no case to speak of. It's the WiebeTech SuperDriveDock. Power is from the bus so the only connection is to the computer itself, via firewire cable. I've used it on 200 gigabyte drives on the Mac, so I don't know how it will work in DOS. I'm sure they can answer all your questions. They are very responsive. I had trouble with the first unit they sent me and they shipped a replacement overnight, even before I could ship them back the defective item.

http://www.wiebetech.com/products.html