Need Hard Drive Enclosure for Serial ATA drive with FireWire 1394a external connection

[M]

I have a lot of data on both internal hard drives and external Firewire
drives. I have found on my PC at least that Firewire is more reliable than
USB.
None of my data is backed up and now that 1000GB drives are now available
this seems like a good backup solution. Unfortunately all 1000GB drives
have a SATA interface and my PC will not take any more expansion cards.
I have always bought eMagic enclosures
http://www.komplett.co.uk/k/ki.aspx?sku=307146 can anyone recommend an
equivalent with a SATA internal interface and a 1394a external interface?
Thank you.

 

[Anna]

I have a lot of data on both internal hard drives and external Firewire
drives. I have found on my PC at least that Firewire is more reliable than
USB.
None of my data is backed up and now that 1000GB drives are now available
this seems like a good backup solution. Unfortunately all 1000GB drives
have a SATA interface and my PC will not take any more expansion cards.
I have always bought eMagic enclosures
http://www.komplett.co.uk/k/ki.aspx?sku=307146 can anyone recommend an
equivalent with a SATA internal interface and a 1394a external interface?
Thank you.

M:
I may have a suggestion or two for you but before doing so it would be
helpful if you would clarify your present situation...

1. You're working with a desktop PC I assume. Assuming it is, do you have
one or more vacant 5 1/4" bays available?
2. Is your system SATA capable? How many SATA connectors does your
motherboard have?
3. Assuming your system is SATA-capable, how many of those SATA connectors
are in use?
4. Re your present two internal HDDs - are they PATA or SATA?
5. You say "None of my data is backed up". What are you using that second
internal HDD for, just storage? Or are you working with a RAID
configuration?
6. And you say you've "always bought eMagic enclosures". Then you didn't use
those external enclosures for backup purposes? Just additional storage,
perhaps?
Anna

 

[M]

M:
I may have a suggestion or two for you but before doing so it would be
helpful if you would clarify your present situation...

1. You're working with a desktop PC I assume. Assuming it is, do you have
one or more vacant 5 1/4" bays available?
2. Is your system SATA capable? How many SATA connectors does your
motherboard have?
3. Assuming your system is SATA-capable, how many of those SATA connectors
are in use?
4. Re your present two internal HDDs - are they PATA or SATA?
5. You say "None of my data is backed up". What are you using that second
internal HDD for, just storage? Or are you working with a RAID
configuration?
6. And you say you've "always bought eMagic enclosures". Then you didn't
use those external enclosures for backup purposes? Just additional
storage, perhaps?
Anna

My PC predates SATA and all hard drives are PATA IBM/Hitachi Deskstars. I
use the external Firewire ones for storage and the internal two for
multibooting and storage. My PC does not support RAID. All internal bays
are used as are all PCI slots. The eMagic enclosures look neat and seem
reliable. Somehow I seem to have built up a large collection of data and as
the drives are now getting old backing up seems like a good idea!

 

[Anna]

My PC predates SATA and all hard drives are PATA IBM/Hitachi Deskstars. I
use the external Firewire ones for storage and the internal two for
multibooting and storage. My PC does not support RAID. All internal bays
are used as are all PCI slots. The eMagic enclosures look neat and seem
reliable. Somehow I seem to have built up a large collection of data and
as the drives are now getting old backing up seems like a good idea!

Well, since you don't have SATA capability, that negates one suggestion I
was going to make. I was thinking about an external HDD enclosure that has
SATA-to-SATA connectivity capability. The significant advantages - there are
two that come to mind - of that hardware device is that you gain
substantially better HDD performance in comparison to PATA HDDs, and
secondly, the SATA HDD is treated as an *internal* HDD by the system even
though it physically resides outside the computer case. In so doing, the
drive becomes bootable when the OS is installed (or cloned) onto it.

The other suggestion I was thinking about - depending upon whether your
computer case had at least one 5 1/4" vacant bay available - was to equip
your desktop PC with a removable HDD (PATA or otherwise). But since you
apparently do not have such a vacant bay available, that is not a viable
option unless it's possible (and you have the desire) to manipulate one or
more of your present devices installed in a 5 1/4" bay to create a vacant
bay to house the removable HDD.

So I guess your use of a USB/Firewire external HDD will best meet your
objective. I've no experience with the eMagic model you mentioned, but since
your experience with those devices has been positive, it seems sensible to
continue using them, no?
Anna

 

[Lil' Dave]

I have a lot of data on both internal hard drives and external Firewire
drives. I have found on my PC at least that Firewire is more reliable than
USB.
None of my data is backed up and now that 1000GB drives are now available
this seems like a good backup solution. Unfortunately all 1000GB drives
have a SATA interface and my PC will not take any more expansion cards.
I have always bought eMagic enclosures
http://www.komplett.co.uk/k/ki.aspx?sku=307146 can anyone recommend an
equivalent with a SATA internal interface and a 1394a external interface?
Thank you.

While I have the same good experiences with Firewire enclosures with ide
drives in them. IE - excellent. The manufacturers continue to promote USB2
as the bus system for vast majority of their products vice firewire. Some
have combined USB2 and firewire on their external enclosures. Consumers to
generally continue to ignore firewire, use USB 2.0 oriented hardware.

Haven't seen any USB2/firewire enclosure with SATA internal connections.
The 1TB hard drive you're talking about is probably SATAII capable. To take
advantage of it, you need the appropriate motherboard. Whether onboard
SATAII, or, a PCI 64 bus to move the data in case of a SATAII card.

Never stops, does it?
Dave

 

[Rock]

My PC predates SATA and all hard drives are PATA IBM/Hitachi Deskstars. I
use the external Firewire ones for storage and the internal two for
multibooting and storage. My PC does not support RAID. All internal bays
are used as are all PCI slots. The eMagic enclosures look neat and seem
reliable. Somehow I seem to have built up a large collection of data and
as the drives are now getting old backing up seems like a good idea!

It's not a good idea to make a correlation between the need to backup and
the age of a drive. The time to backup is immediately upon getting any data
you can't afford to loose. New drives die. I don't know about the
reliability or quality of your drives, but in the past the IBM Deskstars
were so bad they were nicknamed the "Deathstar". I believe that was before
Hitachi took over. In any event many things can precipitate data loss, not
just drive failure. Always have a full and complete backup. It's good
you're finally going to get his done. Consider yourself fortunate.

 

[M]

Well, since you don't have SATA capability, that negates one suggestion I
was going to make. I was thinking about an external HDD enclosure that has
SATA-to-SATA connectivity capability. The significant advantages - there
are two that come to mind - of that hardware device is that you gain
substantially better HDD performance in comparison to PATA HDDs, and
secondly, the SATA HDD is treated as an *internal* HDD by the system even
though it physically resides outside the computer case. In so doing, the
drive becomes bootable when the OS is installed (or cloned) onto it.

The other suggestion I was thinking about - depending upon whether your
computer case had at least one 5 1/4" vacant bay available - was to equip
your desktop PC with a removable HDD (PATA or otherwise). But since you
apparently do not have such a vacant bay available, that is not a viable
option unless it's possible (and you have the desire) to manipulate one or
more of your present devices installed in a 5 1/4" bay to create a vacant
bay to house the removable HDD.

So I guess your use of a USB/Firewire external HDD will best meet your
objective. I've no experience with the eMagic model you mentioned, but
since your experience with those devices has been positive, it seems
sensible to continue using them, no?
Anna

The point of my post is that eMagic don't make a Firewire to SATA enclosure
and I have not been able to find anyone that does, I had hoped someone would
no where I could get one.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

It's not a good idea to make a correlation between the need to backup and
the age of a drive. The time to backup is immediately upon getting any data
you can't afford to loose. New drives die. I don't know about the
reliability or quality of your drives, but in the past the IBM Deskstars
were so bad they were nicknamed the "Deathstar". I believe that was before
Hitachi took over. In any event many things can precipitate data loss, not
just drive failure. Always have a full and complete backup. It's good
you're finally going to get his done. Consider yourself fortunate.

I don't usually make "me too" posts, but the points Rock makes above
are so important that I can't have strongly echoing everything he
says.