Home made external hard drives

S

socialpest

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I have an old pc with 2x80Gb hard drives. However, I no longer use the PC. I have a powerbook and the 40Gb is not enough so need an external drive (for backup if not anything else).

I'm sure I remember seeing a box that had a USB/Firewire cable on it that could house two drives - does anyone know what is was that I saw and if I can use it for my PowerBook G4.

Many thanks in advance! :)
 
OP
S

socialpest

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thanks immdb - looks just the thing. now i need to find one in europe... :)

i hope they have very long firewire cables so i can hide this in the corner ;)
 
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Mac Pro Quad Xeon 2.66GHz 3GB RAM, G4 Quicksilver w/Sonnet 1GHz Encore ST, 1ghz G4 Powerbook
Found this at FirewireDirect

Q: What is the maximum length a FireWire (A) cable can be?
A: The maximum cable length for connecting device to device with a 400Mbps cable is 4.5-meters (14.85ft). The Firewire specification calls for 10 meter (32ft) cables that may be used in conjunction with a repeater when it is necessary to extend FireWire cables over long distances. FirewireDirect does not offer these cables at this time because tests have shown them to be unreliable in some situations. We suggest using 4.5 meter cables and hubs when needing to extend to greater distances and don't recommend 10 meter cables (if you can find them) to our customers.
 
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WilliS

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but thats like... code specification...

im sure you could get longer ones without too much of a problem...

its like Cat5 cables... i think for a patch cable, they cant be more than 6 feet or something silly like that.... of course i have a 25' one in my dorm room :p
 
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Aluminum PowerBook G4. 15.2" SUPAH-drive
Did it work? Anybody try this? I'm kinda needing more space.. even w/ the 300+ gigs hardrive space.. I think i need at least 400... :) Yay for Final Cut Pro and Soundtrack.

EY
 
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S

socialpest

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I found a nice case that looks great next to my PowerBook.

http://www.computex.com.tw/mapower/detail_productmain_virtual.asp?id=22613&index=11575&pcode=HX200

Seems to work a treat - now I am debating the best way to format the old hard disk I have in there, can anyone please shed some light on the advantages of the following; Mac OS Extended, Mac OS Standard, MS-DOS or UNIX?

I intend to use it as back-up and to store movies, music and software files.

Many thanks in advance...

PS - i decided to try a case for just one drive, as it happens one of the drives I was going to use is very old and terribly noisy so i will use that for a monthly backup and not day to day.
 

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