Firewire

[benwood]

I have a old 2 bay external hard drive case that I connected to my PC (NOT a Mac) via Firewire 400 to record video. The case held 2 IDE hard drives and a IDE to Firewire bridgeboard. I'd like to reuse the case but update it to use SATA hard drives. So I need a new bridgeboard that supports two or more SATA drives in JBOD mode instead. Also the board should support drives of greater than 2 TB capacity.

Yes I know Firewire is a dying standard but the ESATA and USB 2.0 and 3.0 cases I've tried have been problematic while Firewire hasn't given me any trouble. Does a board like this exist? If so where would I find one? And are there any other forums dedicated to the Macintosh where I might ask?

 

[Eug]

The SATA to FireWire adapters exist online but I've never tried one.

Note that if you buy prebuilt USB 3 external drives, you generally won't get the same issues you sometimes get with DIY enclosures.

What kind of problems are you having with USB 3 drives?

By the way, I have had an eSATA drive plugged into my NAS for years with no problems.

 

[Ichinisan]

IIRC, you can buy enclosures from Newegg or Amazon that have SATA on the inside and multiple interfaces (FireWire, USB, eSATA) on the outside.

 

[rugby]

I wouldn't use FW for anything at this point It's so slow you'll kill yourself waiting for data to migrate. Look at this case:

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/NewerTech/GM3QKIT0GB/

 

[Eug]

Actually, I still use a Firewire 800 Compact Flash reader. It's permanently connected to my 2010 iMac. Much faster than USB 2. (The machine doesn't have USB 3.)