FW800 2.5 inch enclosure? OWC/IcyBox/others?

[Oujmik]

I want to make an external SSD boot drive that will be backward compatible with my old mini (FW800 is it's fastest port), so I'm looking for an enclosure that supports FW800 and USB 3.0. So far I've found the OWC Elite Pro Mini (£50 with shipping to UK) or an Icy Box (also £50 on Amazon).

This is pretty steep for an enclosure but I appreciate I'm trying to buy something niche and somewhat obsolete.

Which would you choose? Or could you recommend a third option?

 

[AlexMaximus]

Sk-2500

I have an older version of the SK-2500 enclosure. It works great for me.
When you google, notice the different versions available.
The old ones are FW400 & FW800, the new ones USB3&FW800.

Google for SK-2500 combo, you should be able to find it or at least rebranded versions of it. Unfortunately its professional grade and there for more expensive.

 

[Groovy]

WD Passport Studio 2TB FireWire 800

These can be found on sale for $140.00 in the last month at various electronics outlets and ebay.

 

[Oujmik]

I bought a complete OWC on-the-go 120GB externall SSD - took a while to come and incurred some customs fees, but still a decent buy.

The thing that's bugging me now is that it's suffering with the Mavericks Firewire bug (i.e. it won't sleep even if the mac is off) which I thought had been fixed

 

[brdeveloper]

I bought a complete OWC on-the-go 120GB externall SSD - took a while to come and incurred some customs fees, but still a decent buy.

The thing that's bugging me now is that it's suffering with the Mavericks Firewire bug (i.e. it won't sleep even if the mac is off) which I thought had been fixed

Isn't a 7200rpm HDD capable of saturating FW800 bandwidth?

 

[Oujmik]

Isn't a 7200rpm HDD capable of saturating FW800 bandwidth?

Just about for sequential read/write, but nowhere close for random, which is what I'm interested in. The system is much faster for app launches etc booting from the SSD on FW800. Even USB2.0 gives a small performance hike.

It seems that breaking it open and installing the SSD is the only way to get fast, bug free operation, but I don't have time for that right now.

 

[krypticos]

im looking to get this enclosure for doing transfers between my older macs and my mbp. sorry didnt see usb 3 requirement this only has usb 2