I'm considering making my own harddrive enclosure as I want something
very quiet, compact and that looks good, so I've been thinking about
using a 19" rack enclosure such as this:
http://img-europe.electrocomponents.com/largeimages/R224256-01.jpg
(I suppose a 1U high enclosure will do).
The positive thing about using such an enclosure is that I could place
it in my equipment rack along with other 19" gear, making my desk
tidier, I could find the best way to silence it and I would put a
power supply inside the enclosure instead of an external "wall wart".
My computer is a 1.67GHz Powerbook G4 which has FireWire 400 and 800.
I'll be using the external drives mostly for (amateur) video editing
and audio-recording. I already have an external drive, which is a
Samsung 400GB (HD-400LD) IDE drive installed in an OWC Mercury Elite
(http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other%20World%20Computing/
MEFW912UAL1K/) which has both FireWire flavours and USB 2.0 for the
most flexibility. Unfortunately my Samsung drive (although considered
silent) makes a lot of vibrations which in turn causes a loud hum in
the enclosure and my desk. With a custom designed enclosure I could
try to isolate the vibrations.
The next drive I'm considering getting is a 500 GB Western Digital
WD5000AAKB. They're supposed to be even more quiet that the Samsung
drives because they don't vibrate as much.
Anyway, I have some questions:
1) I know that I need a "bridge" board, similar to that in my OWC
enclosure. It would be a waste of space to put just one harddrive in a
19" rack enclosure. I would like to have room for two. Perhaps even
four (in case I ever need to add drives later).
I've found a bridge board which allows for two drives, has Firewire
400, 800 and USB. Is the following a good choice, or are there better
bridge boards to be found?:
http://www.ioi.com.tw/products/proddetail.aspx?ProdID=1010073
2) My current (external) drive is the Samsung HD-400LD which is an IDE
ATA drive. The OWC enclosure doesn't take SATA drives.
In my situation (a PowerBook G4 with external drives), is there any
point in using SATA drives instead of ATA?
If yes, are there bridge boards around that take both ATA and SATA
drives? If there are I could buy a SATA drive (Western Digital
WD5000AAKS) instead of an ATA drive (Western Digital WD5000AAKB) as
first intended and keep my Samsung HD-400LD.
3) What would be the smartest way to wire up the drives so that I
don't need to have them both running when I just want to access one of
them at the time?
I would probably install a power switch on the front-panel of the
enclosure, which turns on power for the bridge-board and a cooling fan
(or perhaps I don't need a fan if I ventilate the enclosure well?),
but instead of having that spin up both drives, is there a way I could
either spin up/down each drive individually via software from the
Mac?
Alternatively I could mount a power switch for each drive on the front
panel, but it looks a bit silly with several power switches.
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