I want to put the 3.5" 80GB HD from my defunct 17" iMac G5 into a case for use as backup storage. Firewire would be nice.

The iMac was purchased in 2004 with 1.6 GHz PowerPC Processor.

Any recommendations?

ryck

Other World Computing, known as OWC, has a good reputation and a lot of enclosures
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/add-ons-and-hubs/enclosure-kits
This may be what you are looking for. I am sure others will give good suggestions.
Mark

I have several of the OWC enclosures MarkG mentioned and all have been highly reliable. They are not glamour queens, but highly functional and completely compatible. I would recommend getting an enclosure with USB 2, Firewire 400/800, and eSATA interfaces. That should provide compatibility for the foreseeable future and the enclosure will likely outlast the drive you are putting in it.

Agreed, OWC cases are solid, but very pricey for a tiny 80 GB drive. You might also want to look for cheaper options @ Newegg.com.

ryck,

Small Dog Electronics offers some options also: Storage & Backup/Enclosures/Single Disk.

I just bought a LaCie Rugged (500gb) and am happy with it. Has 1x each: fw400, fw800, USB. So I can leave one more cable at home. (still have a 400 to 800 cable, that will work in all instances for fw)

The drive is a bit physically larger but the rubber bumper around it is good and high visibility. (hard to forget somewhere when packing up) The case inside the bumper is pretty cheap looking though but I don't care about that. Comes with three cables and a power cable too.

But that's if you want something already with a drive in it. Comes in cheaper than OWC. You can get it a lot cheaper than what that page lists.

I now have the drive in hand but think it's a SATA drive even though, when I enter the G5 serial number at Apple, their site says that the G5 came with an ATA drive. I've looked at pictures on line and this definitely appears to have the SATA connectors - a 15 pin and a 7 pin side by side.

I thought that SATA didn't become more widely used until 2006. Could it be that Apple was using some SATA drives earlier?

And...my new machine has a 400 Firewire and an 800 Firewire but there is no indication which is which. If the drive is only 400 does it care whether it's plugged into 400 or 800?

ryck

> And...my new machine has a 400 Firewire and an 800 Firewire but there is no indication which is which. If the drive is only 400 does it care whether it's plugged into 400 or 800?

Your HD question is beyond me, but I can help you with this one.

1. FireWire 400 and 800 ports (all ports I've run across, for that matter) are shape-coded; it's impossible to mix them up. (The 400 port is rectangular with a triangular projection on one side; the 800 port is rectangular.)

2. My understanding is that you can run an FW400 device through an FW800 port, but you will only get FW400 performance.

Hope this helps.

You will also need an adaptor cable.

I had a Mac G5 Tower purchased in Jan 2004 that had a SATA hard drive installed and an expansion bay in which I installed a second SATA drive. After the G5 main board failed I put the drives in external enclosures and use them via firewire for backup and cloning. If you do not want to mess with enclosures then there is an alternative solution at Granite Digital.

http://www.granitedigital.com/usb20tosataideharddrivebridgeadapter.aspx

I have one of these setups and can access any bare SATA or IDE (ATA) hard drive without any problem.

http://www.granitedigital.com/images/usb-sk.jpg