I have 5hdd (2.5" & 3.5"). A docking station -i guess- would do nicely to place them on and have them all working. I was wondering though if there is another option, other than the docking station. The Enclosure solution for each is not a solution i would consider.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
a docking station, or...
- Thread starter zoran
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
The other thing you should think about with the benefit of using an enclosure is the drives are cooled.
The drives lifespan can decrease significantly if it overheats. Which could potentially happen sitting out on your desk.
Personally I would only use those cables as a temporary option and not a permanent solution.
The drives lifespan can decrease significantly if it overheats. Which could potentially happen sitting out on your desk.
Personally I would only use those cables as a temporary option and not a permanent solution.
I honestly feel a QNAP type enclosure for all the drives would be more beneficial. Especially from a cooling perspective...
So... are you continually swapping those EIDE drives between the Mac and some bit of irreplaceable specialist equipment that only takes EIDE drives?
I get that's a possibility but if not, then the time has probably come to drag your system kicking and screaming into 2010 and junk those drives. I'm not one for junking perfectly good technology but - excepting the 'specialist gear' qualification above - a 10 year-old disc drive is ripe for retirement, and probably have tiny capacities by modern standards. If your other 6 drives are of a similar vintage you might want to thing about consolidating them to fewer, newer drives.
If you can get the EIDE out of the equation, there are plenty of multi-drive enclosures to choose from (e.g. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Sabrent-Tray-less-Docking-Station-DS-SC5B/dp/B07Y3WDHLD) - but compare the price with that of getting newer, higher-capacity external drives. Also, with energy prices these days, you really don't want to be continually running 8 full-sized hard drives.
Should work - and if you are frequently swapping these drives between machines, or using bare drives for a rotating backup, then those open-type docking stations may be useful. There are some with IDE support (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Docking-Tccmebius-TCC-S867-UK-External-Enclosure-Red-Black/dp/B07MVGGG62). If not, they're useful things to have in the cupboard but I wouldn't use one day-to-day.
...but, seriously, unless you have a very good reason for keeping EIDE drives around, I'd take them out behind the woodshed and put them out of there misery with an axe.
Disclaimer: I haven't personally used either of the linked products. I do have a couple of old "open type" HD docks which have been useful in the past (and many boxes full of old IDE drives awaiting the day I get round to securely erasing them with a hammer and disposing of appropriately).
You haven't explained why you're still using EIDE drives in 2023. Unless you have some very particular circumstance that you haven't shared, those EIDE drives need to be "connected" with a large hammer. They're likely 10 or more years old and well past their life expectancy.
One of those USB-to-IDE interfaces might be useful if you need to recover the contents of old drives before consigning them to the attic, or if you are continually swapping them between your Mac and some bit of legacy equipment.
