Replacing external Firewire hard drive

  • Thread starter Thread starter Ahroo
  • Start date Start date
A

Ahroo

My external firewire hard drive has died and I need to replace it. I read
somewhere that the actual drive inside the enclosure is really just a
regular old IDE internal hard drive and what makes it "firewire" is some
sort of connector that is part of the enclosure, and that I could simply put
a new IDE drive into the enclosure and it will become a firewire drive. Is
that true? If so is there anything more I need to know about this? It would
certainly be a lot less expensive than buying a new external firewire drive!
Thanks.
 
Ahroo said:
My external firewire hard drive has died and I need to replace it. I read
somewhere that the actual drive inside the enclosure is really just a
regular old IDE internal hard drive and what makes it "firewire" is some
sort of connector that is part of the enclosure, and that I could simply
put
a new IDE drive into the enclosure and it will become a firewire drive. Is
that true? If so is there anything more I need to know about this? It
would
certainly be a lot less expensive than buying a new external firewire
drive!
Thanks.
Click to expand...

all true just undo the case and look see............just a plain old IDE.
 
My external firewire hard drive has died and I need to replace it. I read
somewhere that the actual drive inside the enclosure is really just a
regular old IDE internal hard drive and what makes it "firewire" is some
sort of connector that is part of the enclosure, and that I could simply put
a new IDE drive into the enclosure and it will become a firewire drive. Is
that true? If so is there anything more I need to know about this? It would
certainly be a lot less expensive than buying a new external firewire drive!
Thanks.
Click to expand...


yes that is correct. The one issue might be that if your
old drive ran at low RPM it may need less cooling than a new
drive so you should check the temperature of the new drive
you install. Also, some older external enclosures didn't
support large hard drives (over 120 or 160GB), so if yours
is like this you must take note of it before trying to fill
a larger drive with data.
 
I had a Maxtor 160GB inside an IcyBox external USB enclosure, no fan in it.
Noticed that it always seemed very warm, it failed at a month old.
Since heard of quite a few of these failing. General recommendations if
using one of these.
1. Power it off when not in use.
2. If buying buy one with it's own mains supply, don't depend on the USB
port to supply enough power.
3. If buying buy one with an inbuilt cooling fan, cost a bit more but more
reliable.
 
I had a Maxtor 160GB inside an IcyBox external USB enclosure, no fan in it.
Noticed that it always seemed very warm, it failed at a month old.
Since heard of quite a few of these failing. General recommendations if
using one of these.
1. Power it off when not in use.
2. If buying buy one with it's own mains supply, don't depend on the USB
port to supply enough power.
3. If buying buy one with an inbuilt cooling fan, cost a bit more but more
reliable.
Click to expand...

I agree, would never rely on an external enclosure for a
full sized ~ 3.5" drive unless it was only running for a
short time to make a backup then promptly powered off before
it got very warm. In some cases it may not be hard to add
your own fan to a passive enclosure but then there's that
issue of voiding the warranty. Personally, I'd rather void
the warranty than lose a drive's data but then this is a
large part of the reason I dont' rely on external enclosures
at all rather than a separate offline system.
 
My first chance back to the newsgroup since posting - thank you all for your
info. One more question: Would the drive I put in the enclosure need to be
set as master or slave, or does it not matter? Thanks again!
 
Ahroo said:
My first chance back to the newsgroup since posting - thank you all for
your
info. One more question: Would the drive I put in the enclosure need to be
set as master or slave, or does it not matter? Thanks again!
Click to expand...
Set it as Master
bw..OJ
snipped
 
Back
Top