I have an internal SATA drive that I picked up when I had to return an external drive that had been given to me as a gift which was not mac compatible.
I figured, heck, lets try this swappable thing and see how it goes. So I bought the drive, but I don't have an enclosure for it. They didn't have any at the store, so I'm looking online.
What kind of HD enclosure would you recommend for someone using an iMac? I'm pretty sure I want it cooled if possible and one if a CF slot would be nice too. If I understand correctly, there's no way for my iMac to have an eSATA port (told you, I'm not a techie), but I could use a Firewire port instead... right? Ugh, I'm really lost at this. I usually just buy the usual old slow USB 2.0 external drives because I can't ever figure out what I'm doing...
If you're on a Mac, get a firewire enclosure. No debate, whatever the "paper" performance is for USB 2.0, firewire will deliver better results. Especially with large volumes of data, like, say, 1000 RAW files.
Eh, see now I'm just as confused as when I started. IME, having used both in the past, Firewire was always faster that's the main reason I passed over the Blacx when I saw those on the shelf, no firewire. And, if I'm not mistaken, seeing as how I have two iMacs, I can't actually use the eSATA connection... right?
TrojanHorse wrote:
Firewire is marginally faster than USB 2.0 so either way, you're not really giving up much.
What?!?
Not even close if you've tried doing backups to both devices. I've used external exclosures w/ both interfaces and Firewire kicks the pants off USB 2.0....on the order of 2-3x the time it takes to do a system backup.
Firewire 800 is nearly eSATA speed (enough to connect to a drive at the same speed as the drive being inside your computer)...
kenyee - OK, you made me look... it depends on which version you're using.
USB 2 is rated at 480 MB/s but probably achieves half to 2/3 that in real life.
Firewire S400 is about 400 MB/s but because it doesn't rely on the processor to manage the transfer.
S800 is probably what many people are using now and is obviously what you're using because it's about 3 times faster than what you'd expect with USB 2. Nowhere near what eSata gives you though.
eSata is going to get you about 3.2 GB/s, I'll let you know when I finish hooking up my new BlacX this afternoon.
Firewire has a NEW spec - S1600 and S3200 which supposedly was going to have products out right about now, no idea if that's true or not. The S3200 spec would be roughly equivalent to the eSata speeds, as would the new USB 3.0 spec whenever that actually hits reality.
