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Sh!t We Like - External Harddrives Pt1
Replacing the PowerMac G5 with a Mac Mini (Core-2-Duo) has worked out great so far; I really do enjoy this small, fast, and quiet computer. However, to put Mac OS X Leopard's new integrated backup program a.k.a Time Machine to work, requires a 2nd harddrive. Luckily, I had removed the secondary harddrive, which we had added just a couple months ago, from the PowerMac, before selling it and finding a nice external enclosure for the 3.5" SATA drive shouldn't be all that hard.
Acomdata Samba USB Enclosure Kit Black
Acomdata Samba USB Enclosure Kit Black
The harddrive at hand is a 250B Seagate ST3250823AS, a pretty regular 7200 RPM drive with 8MByte buffer - the spec. is available here: http://www.seagate.com/support/disc/manuals/sata/cuda72008_sata_pm.pdf.
After looking around for a while, I finally settled on the black acomdata samba hard drive enclosure, which supports both 3.5" SATA or PATA drives.
It's a fanless enclosure but has air vents on front and back; it comes with a shielding cage, an important feature, not to be found in really cheap enclosures. Most importantly however, the acomdata 701 Samba Hard Drive Enclosure comes with one of the better power supplies: a 12V 2A AC wall-adapter. Most of the 3.5" hard drive enclosures that are in the Samba's price range come with really cheap dual voltage (12V 5V 1.5A) AC adapters, the ones with the S-Video style connector.
Taking a closer look at the aforementioned Seagate SATA drive spec reveals that the drive requires a startup current of 12V 2.8 amps, which even the Samba just barely provides. However, cheaper enclosures like the POWMAX 3.5" eSATA USB2.0 EMVESAT35 (a.k.a Moving Star) for instance aren't able to start the drive half the time.