I'm planning on placing two hard drives in a self-made external enclosure which will connect to my Powerbook G4 via Firewire 800.
For this I need a dual Firewire "bridge board", and I've been looking into the Span IB-BF8US which has Firewire 800 and USB connectors at one end, and two SATA connectors at the other end (which will connect to the drives).
It can be configured for JBOD or RAID.
I want to set it up for two completely individual hard drives (which for practical reasons share the same enclosure/power supply etc.) so I suppose that'll be JBOD, right?
Next, I already have an ATA drive which I want to move over to this enclosure, then buy an additional drive.
Now, there are Firewire bridge-boards that cater for ATA drives instead of SATA drives, such as the Span IB-FB924A which supports 4 ATA drives in JBOD or SPAN mode. Unlike the previous bridge-board I mentioned however, it doesn't have any USB port meaning less compatibility with non-Firewire equipped computers should I ever need to hook up the drives to another machine.
Finally there's the Span IB-FB922A which supports 2 ATA drives in JBOD mode (there's no RAID support), but again only with Firewire 800 connectors and no USB.
Then, if I go for a bridge board with SATA connectors I need to convert one of the connectors to ATA (for my existing drive).
Having said all of this I have a few questions:
1) Should I go for a Firewire 800 to SATA bridge board, or Firewire 800 to ATA bridge board? I've been told that the Firewire interface is the bottleneck with SATA drives, so there's really no advantage in using SATA drives over ATA drives in such a setup. Is this true?
2) If I go for a bridge board with SATA connectors I need to "convert" my existing IDE/ATA drive into a SATA drive by using an ATA to SATA converter of some sort . Do I need a SATA to ATA converter or an ATA to SATA converter?
I've seen these boards a lot cheaper at eBay, but I really need to know what kind of board I need to get before I order.
3) Since I (usually) won't be using both drives at the same time I find it a waste to have both of them spinning, causing tear & wear.
Is there a way to configure the drives, bridge board and/or the Mac so that when I power up the external enclosure the drives don't spin up as usual, but I need to do something on the Mac (sending a "spin up" command to the drives) so I can choose which drive I want to use? (sort of like the opposite of dragging an external drive into the trash icon which unmounts and powers it down).
Enclosed are photos of the Firewire 800 to dual-SATA bridge board and a couple of ATA-SATA converter boards. All taken from the Span website.
For this I need a dual Firewire "bridge board", and I've been looking into the Span IB-BF8US which has Firewire 800 and USB connectors at one end, and two SATA connectors at the other end (which will connect to the drives).
It can be configured for JBOD or RAID.
I want to set it up for two completely individual hard drives (which for practical reasons share the same enclosure/power supply etc.) so I suppose that'll be JBOD, right?
Next, I already have an ATA drive which I want to move over to this enclosure, then buy an additional drive.
Now, there are Firewire bridge-boards that cater for ATA drives instead of SATA drives, such as the Span IB-FB924A which supports 4 ATA drives in JBOD or SPAN mode. Unlike the previous bridge-board I mentioned however, it doesn't have any USB port meaning less compatibility with non-Firewire equipped computers should I ever need to hook up the drives to another machine.
Finally there's the Span IB-FB922A which supports 2 ATA drives in JBOD mode (there's no RAID support), but again only with Firewire 800 connectors and no USB.
Then, if I go for a bridge board with SATA connectors I need to convert one of the connectors to ATA (for my existing drive).
Having said all of this I have a few questions:
1) Should I go for a Firewire 800 to SATA bridge board, or Firewire 800 to ATA bridge board? I've been told that the Firewire interface is the bottleneck with SATA drives, so there's really no advantage in using SATA drives over ATA drives in such a setup. Is this true?
2) If I go for a bridge board with SATA connectors I need to "convert" my existing IDE/ATA drive into a SATA drive by using an ATA to SATA converter of some sort . Do I need a SATA to ATA converter or an ATA to SATA converter?
I've seen these boards a lot cheaper at eBay, but I really need to know what kind of board I need to get before I order.
3) Since I (usually) won't be using both drives at the same time I find it a waste to have both of them spinning, causing tear & wear.
Is there a way to configure the drives, bridge board and/or the Mac so that when I power up the external enclosure the drives don't spin up as usual, but I need to do something on the Mac (sending a "spin up" command to the drives) so I can choose which drive I want to use? (sort of like the opposite of dragging an external drive into the trash icon which unmounts and powers it down).
Enclosed are photos of the Firewire 800 to dual-SATA bridge board and a couple of ATA-SATA converter boards. All taken from the Span website.
