I've already bought the enclosure. It's the Mercury Elite Al pro from OWC which has Firewire 400, 800 and USB 1.1 and 2.0 connectors. The Firewire interface uses the Ofxord 912 chipset.
Apparently it takes all 3.5" IDE or ATA drives, but I'm really a clueless newbie when it comes to drive mechanisms, so I need some help deciding which one to get.
Obviously (posting in this forum) one of my main concerns is that the drive is quiet!
![Very Happy :D](./images/smilies/icon_biggrin.gif)
Having read through articles etc. here I've understood that the Seagate Barracuda series come highly recommended as they're quiet, cool running (the above enclosure doesn't have a built-in fan, so that's something to take into consideration) and has a 5 year warranty as opposed to the other producers which only have 1 year.
I read an article from Apple entitled "Final Cut Pro: What Kind of Hard Drive Should I Buy?" ("Final cut" is a professional video-editing program from Apple) where it says:
*The drive is the only device on the FireWire bus.
*The drive's speed is at least 7200 RPM.
*The drive can sustain minimum data rates appropriate for your video format (3.7 MB/s for DV).
*The drive uses a modern, high-performance bridge chip such as the Oxford 911 or 922.
*The drive uses its own power supply, and is not powered from the FireWire bus.
OK, the enclosure has its own separate, external power-supply and it uses the Oxford 912 chipset, so that should be fine.
As for being the only device on the Firewire bus; well, I've heard that the Firewire 400 and 800 connectors share the same bus, and I'll be connecting a camcorder to the Firewire 400 port, so I'm a little unsure about this. Perhaps I should ask about that in a Mac specific forum.
Finding a 7200 RPM drive is easy, but I really have no idea how to determine if a drive is able to sustain a data transfer rate of 3.7 MB/second.
Having looked at the Seagate website it seems I have the following choices:
500 GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 (model ST3500641A)
400 GB Barracuda 7200.8 (model ST3400832A)
I've found another 400 GB model, not being sure what the difference is compared to the one above:
400 GB Barracuda 7200.9 (model ST3400633A)
I'm sure there are others as well.
I'm also confused about the standards: IDE, ATA, SATA etc.
![Confused :?](./images/smilies/icon_confused.gif)