What kind of external drive should I buy?

Is it making a clicking noise? One of the known faults of the Lacie drives is the power system failing which makes the drives click (in much the same way they do when the drives catastrophically fail, irritatingly). I have actually had the same effect when I used the wrong power supply with the wrong drive, it clicked a lot but never finished mounting.

If there is this loud clicking then in might actually be a case fault in which would mean the drive may even be fine but it is not work reusing the case.

If you don't get this noise it probably is the drive, and in that case yes it may well be worth reusing the case with a different internal drive (I won't even start to suggest a brand! :) ). I have done this with their d2 case drives before with no issues. They opened fine, i think the only difference to using a bought enclosure was i had to pull one strip of foam off the side of the case that was glued on in order to access one of the mounting screws, but it was obvious what needed to happen.
 
The clicking from the bad power supply (or catastrophically failed drive) is very noticeable, a lot more than normal 'drive in use' noise. Sounds like this is not the issue.

That said in terms of what is on the disk the news probably isn't great. When you say it stops working on the new intel mac, what does that exactly mean? It disappears from the finder? Does System Profiler see it? (This is in Applications/Utilities, open it then select USB or firewire form the list on the left depending on how you attached the drive). You say it stops Disk Utility launching on the G4 but can you run DU disk repair on it from the intel?

By the way that is the d2 case I several some of, and like I said, assuming the power supply isn't the issue (which it probably isn't) then you can use that case with a different internal drive. They are very easy to take apart with a small Philips screwdriver.
 
I thought I would try it again. I have tried hooking up the external drive to a G4 only to find the G4 will not even finish start-up. It gets to the point where it is supposed to load local disks and stops. Then if I pull out the firewire that connects the external drive, it finishes start-up. There are no unusal noises. It sounds like the drive is working like it always does.

I opened the LaCie case and find that the drive inside is, behold, a Western Digital. A WD1600.
 
LaCie drives have been known to have bad power supply assemblies -- either internal to the drive casing or with the power cord/brick itself.

A good way to check whether or not the drive inside the enclosure is the culprit is to remove the drive from the enclosure and hook it up inside of your G4 (or other Mac tower machine) via IDE or SATA (depending on what the drive is). If the drive works as an internal drive (which is what I'm suspecting will happen), then that points to some problem with the enclosure itself.
 
The drive is IDE. Today I went to the store and found an external drive I liked as it has a removeable drive. It only accepts SATA drives. But at least I can buy any SATA drive I want and just insert it. Cost me $138. It came with, you guessed it, a Western Digital drive (1TB). What I like is that I can buy any SATA drives and swap them so that I can take one home in case of fire, theft, etc. Speaking of theft, is there a simple way to password protect my sensitive stuff? It would be cool if there was a function in Time Machine (my next project).
 
Satcomer, that certainly is a very interesting link. I live in Japan and out in the country for that matter. Although I sometimes import stuff from the U.S. (where most prices are cheaper), it can really be a pain to buy stuff. When some company ships me the wrong item, exchanging it can be a real pain.

The enclosure I just bought does the job and lets me change the drive as easy as inserting a floppy. I will be able to keep backups offsite. I will also try out different brands of SATA drives. I guess you can say I am satisfied. The only thing I would like to know at this point is how to password protect my drive or at least some of the sensitive directories in the event that a drive gets stolen.

Thanks to all who contributed to this thread. I really love this board.
 
ElDiabloConCaca said:
LaCie drives have been known to have bad power supply assemblies -- either internal to the drive casing or with the power cord/brick itself.

A good way to check whether or not the drive inside the enclosure is the culprit is to remove the drive from the enclosure and hook it up inside of your G4 (or other Mac tower machine) via IDE or SATA (depending on what the drive is). If the drive works as an internal drive (which is what I'm suspecting will happen), then that points to some problem with the enclosure itself.
Click to expand...

I finally got around to doing what you suggested. Not sure I did it correctly though. I opened the tower and removed the carriage that holds the drive. I did not take out the drive that came with the Mac. I just connected the IDE drive to the other connectors that were in there. It was a perfect fit. I assumed and I may have assumed wrong, that the machine could the be turned on with two internal drives hooked up at the same time.

When I turned on the machine I got a flashing question mark inside a small rectangular box. Is this because the drive I installed was no good or because I should have disconnected the other drive first? But since the drive carriage holds two drives, I assume that the machine was made to run with two drives if you wanted to do so. So should I assume the drive was bad after all???

I so, that would mean my La Cie external case is OK? If so, could I put a TB drive in it even though it came with a 160 MB drive to begin with?
 
On IDE drives, if you have more than one IDE drive on a single bus (i.e., ribbon cable), then you must ensure that the drives are "jumpered" correctly -- one as "master" and the other as "slave" (or in some later configurations, both jumpered "cs" or "cable select").

It's likely that the drive in the enclosure is jumpered as "master", and the drive inside the computer also as "master." This won't work -- jumper the drive in the enclosure as "slave" when connecting it internally, and "master" when you put it back in the enclosure.
 
It's different for every drive, but typically, you'll find the jumpers next to the IDE/SATA connector and the power connector on the drive. Sometimes on the drive sticker there'll be a diagram of how to place a jumper for different modes -- master, slave, cable select, etc.

Drives usually come with at least one jumper (a small, cubic plastic thingy) that is placed over two jumper pins vertically. See if the drive has one already; if not, you'll need to get one.
 
I use WD because they have the lowest noise on the market.

And reliability is not a key issue here as this disk is used much less often than your system disk and the odds that you will need it are low, therefore the odds it is dead when you need it are extremely low. If you have only one reliable disk, use it for your system.
 
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