Old Ultra ATA drives - can I insert in an external case?

karavite

karavite

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Quick background. My old g4 DP 1 ghz died. I now have a new 24" iMac. The old G4 has three internal drives - all ATA. Though I backed up everything and am okay with that, the old machine will not start up (constant kernal panics and other issues). I have a few old external FW drives. What I am wondering is this - can I install any of these internal drives into one of my old external drives? Can I buy just a "case" of an external drive and do this?

Why? Well, one, just for fun. Two, I don't want to dispose of this computer with nearly 1 TB of my data including taxes, quicken, email... you name it.
 
Yep, you can do exactly that (which is exactly what I've done with several of my old drives from retired computers).

You should be able to pick up an external FireWire or USB "bare" case (i.e., sans drive) from any number of places, including:

http://www.owcomputing.com
http://www.newegg.com
http://www.tigerdirect.com
http://www.buy.com
http://www.amazon.com

Installing the drives into the enclosures should be straightforward, simple and quick for anyone who's used a screwdriver before. Some enclosures don't even require that much knowledge!
 
Cool! Thanks! P.S. Do you ever sleep? :)

Dumb question please. The old G4 uses, i believe, Ultra ATA drives. At newegg I am seeing all kinds of enclosures, but nothing stating ultra ATA or just ATA. I found this statement on another forum:

"In this case ATA, PATA, IDE, EIDE, parallel ATA all mean the same thing. You'll need to choose an external enclosure which is compatible with this interface. These days, they're mostly referred to PATA or parallel ATA to distiguish from SATA or serial ATA. So basically, as long as it doesn't say SATA or serial ATA, you should be fine. Now you'll just have to decide whether you're going to use USB, Firewire or both."

So, from this, I think I need to purchase a drive with an IDE internal interface, 3.5" - right? Firewire would be nice, but I think i see mostly USB 2.0. I can live with that.
 
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Of course I do! What are Tuesdays and Fridays for? ;)

Yep, a 3.5" IDE/EIDE/ATA/PATA enclosure will work. Firewire will be slightly quicker, and if you plan on using the drive heavily in the future, you may want to spend $10 more and splurge and get a Firewire enclosure... but USB will do just fine as well.
 
Thanks for all the help! Found a FW drive at Tiger direct. I tell you, my main problem now is I have 4 external drives plus this one on the way, and only two match. The stackable option or idea is a good one.
 
Ha! I was in that same boat before my mini... 5 external enclosures, 3 different styles, "stackability" was nil.

Since I upgrade to my mini, I splurged and added 5 1TB USB hard drives, all the same style. If you're ever looking for a quiet, spacious, external USB drive, I highly recommend the Western Digital 1TB "Elements" drive. It uses a "green" drive, meaning the spindle speed varies from 5400RPM to 7200RPM depending on load, activity, etc. They auto-spin down every 10 minutes of inactivity (bypassing Mac OS X's internal energy saver settings), which, at times, can be slightly annoying, but nothing that's going to stop me from using them. They're not the quickest drives, but they're by no means "slow" either. Plus they come for under $100 a pop.

The best part is: they all match, they all look solid and sleek, and they stack perfectly. Not to mention I have five freakin' terabytes of storage now, for just under $450.
 
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