Mac geeks: I need some advice on a drive enclosure for my hard drive

In My Humble Opinion
1

I have a desktop CRT iMac - the “Snow” model. Here it is.

It recently died. After discussing it over at the Apple boards, it’s probably some sort of mother board issue. Anyway, the bottom line turned out to be that it would cost at least $200 to fix, which is about what the computer is worth, but the hard drive should still be good.

So, I want the files on the hard drive, and I also wouldn’t mind using the 40 GB drive as an external drive for my laptop.

I’m thinking about getting this PYRO 1394 Drive Kit. It makes it sound simple. Take the hard drive out of the dead iMac, stick it in this enclosure, and voila, I’ve got an external drive from which I can retrieve, and then properly backup my files, and then use it for extra storage.

So, will this work like I think it will? If and when I do this, will I be able to retrieve all my old files, or am I going to have to reformat the drive to be able to use it?

Any better suggestions about what to buy? I like this Pyro one because it’s both Firewire & USB but if someone knows of a better product, please let me know!

2

It really should work just that simply! I have a CompUSA generic that was really just that simple!

3

i’ve used the Pyro case and was NOT impressed, thing only lasted less than a year, by that time, the power supply had crapped out and i had lost the recipt, it’s cheap, it’s plasticky, it’s cheap, it’s got a crappy FireWire bridge board, and did i mention it’s cheap and plasticky?

this is the case i reccomend durable aluminum construction, nice thick silicone shock mounts on the corners of the drive, the thing’s a tank, i’ve had mine nowe almost 3 years, not a single problem with it, it’s been left running for months on end, run on many different Macs, left in my car in subzero temperatures, even dropped a couple times (obviously not running at the time, but still…) it’s a truly durable, rock solid stable case, i reccomend it without hesitation, the thing’s near industrial quality…

oh and the iMac, specifically what’s wrong with it, what will it/won’t it do, could be a simple repair…

4

Normally I leave it on and let it go to sleep at night. One morning it appeared to be asleep but wouldn’t wake up. I touched the power button, which was lit, and I got the startup chime, then it turned off. After that, every time I pressed the power button it would light briefly, I’d hear a little “pop” from the speakers, then nothing. No startup.

I brought it up at the Apple boards, found a few other people with the same problem, and one guy took his to a repair shop and I think they had to replace the mother board.

Initially, I thought it might be that my pram battery was dead, so the first thing I did was replace that, but it didn’t do anything.

5

Oh, I should add there’s no power going to the keyboard or mouse.

6

I can’t (and won’t) try to troubleshoot the computer. However, the Snow iMac is fairly old. It probably doesn’t owe you anything.

I can recommend Other World Computing for Mac upgrades. I bought several external Firewire drives them them and all are still working great.

They sell several external Firewire enclosures; this one seems reasonable.

7

If it’s making an electrical popping noise, it could be the Power/Analog/Video (PAV) board, that’s the big circuit board under the CRT, it’s the power supply and high voltage transformer for the iMac and it’s CRT…

it’s a known trouble spot in the CRT iMac line, has been ever since the days of the first trayloader iMac (the old Bondi machines), a PAV is going to run you about $215 just for the part, and takes around 1.5 to 2 hours to install, the machine needs to be gutted to the frame and the CRT removed, once the new PAV is in place, it needs to be recalibrated while it’s “live” (running)

unfortunately, the machine is so old that unless you have a sentimental attachment to it, it’s not worth repairing, get that MacAlly housing, pop your drive in and put what you would have spent on the repair towards a new Mac

to be brutally honest, stay away from the first generation (1.6 GHz 17" and 1.8 GHz 20") iMac G5’s, they have a known flaw in the power supply and logic board, it’s rare, but not unheard of for the power supply to burn out and take the logic board with it, symptoms are usually no power, a startup chime with no video, or scrambled video, Apple DOES have a repair extension program for this issue (good for 3 years beyond the original date of purchase)

essentially one of Apple’s vendors (the one that supplied the power supplies) had a bad production run of power supplies, Apple switched p/s vendors, and the problem has not occured with the new units, once an iMac G5 has been repaired for this issue, it shouldn’t happen again

the 2nd and 3rd gen iMac G5’s use the revised power supply and i haven’t seen any of them fail.

8

Yup, that sounds just like what we eventually figured it was. I do have a sentimental attachment to the computer, but not a $200 attachment. I’ll salvage the hard drive. Too bad I can’t do something with the ram & CD-RW drive.

It’s just disappointing. I’m used to Macs lasting much longer than their usefulness, and that one was still very useful. Now whenever my powerbook does something “funny” I panic.

Thanks again for the advice. I won’t be buying a new G5 anytime soon, but hopefully when the time comes, you’ll be around to steer me away from any potential lemons.

9

well, let me tell you a secret about the G3 iMacs then…

the design was fundamentally flawed from the start, the Analog board (qand later, the PAV) was always a known weak spot in the iMac design, always has been, since the dats of the first Bondi Blue trayloaders back in 1998 all the way to the 700MHz slot-loaders, Analog/PAV board failures were the most common and consistent repair.

Apple CRT displays never lasted as long as they should have, the old 15" MultiScans (made for Apple by Phillips or Toshiba/NEC) would have the main deflection boards fail, losing one or more electon guns and giving the screen a (usually) yellow, or blue, or green color cast, the 17" Studio Display CRT’s (NEC’s) would burn out when you least wanted them to, about the only reliable Apple displays were the old beige 17" and 21" Apple MultiScans, and those were just basically a Sony Trinitron in Apple plastics, strangely enough, an NEC MultiSync monitor (same as the old graphite Studio Displays) was far more reliable, and it was basically the same monitor

the G4 iMacs were rock solid, great design, very durable and reliable, arguably the best iMac design ever (i still like the ergonomics of the G4 iMac over the G5 iMac), in ditching the CRT, Apple removed about 99% of the failure potential, there are no known trouble spots on the G4 iMac (well, aside from the occasional saggy neck assembly, but nothing that will cause a catastrophic failure like a bad PAV)

the G5 iMacs are still going thru growing pains (the aforementioned power supply issue on the first-gen G5 iMacs has been solved, the new models seem pretty solid, and the new new iMac G5 with the built-in iSight hasn’t been out long enough to show any consistent failure states yet…

well, aside from being a major bitch to take apart for repairs, that is…

10

sorry, got off on a tangent and forgot the point of my post, sorry…

what i was getting at is that the G3 iMac is not a good machine to judge Apple longevity on, the G3 incarnation of the iMac was always weak, and craptacular at best, now, if you had a G4 tower, an iBook, or a PowerBook G3/G4, those will easily last you 5 years plus…

sadly, your experience seems to be par for the course with the G3 based iMacs, sorry to be the bearer of bad news and so blunt, but i was never impressed with the G3 iMacs, and when they went to the service-hostile design of the slot-loaders, i actively began to HATE the iMac G3, especially considering the sheer number of PAV replacements i had to do, which involved gutting the machine to the frame and removing the CRT…

i celebrated the day the CRT iMac was replaced by the G4 iMac, no more PAV replacements, WOOHOO!!!

11

I’m typing this on an Indigo iMac DV+, roughly around the same age as the “Snow” in the OP. Five years and still going strong.

Seems like a pretty good machine to judge Apple longevity to me. But then, I consistently expect to get at least 5 or 6 years of use out of my Macs.

12

Anohter vote for OWC’s external enclosures. I’ve used one that they make for 2" laptop drives to convert older smaller PowerBook drives to external FireWire drives. You can boot from them to run disk utilities such as DiskWarrior as well as use them for file storage.

13

I was wondering if it would be a bootable drive, that could come in handy. I was also considering installing Tiger on it, and see how I like that. Right now I’m still on 10.3.9, and quite happy with that.

14

There are external cases for CD drives too. It’s kinda nice having 2 CD drives if one is a CDRW, it makes duping stuff a breeze.

15

Another unhappy ADS owner. However, I’m a big fan of external Firewire enclosures. I’d suggest trying the OWC branded or MacAlly enclosures.

If you get a 5.25" enclosure, you can put a removeable sled drive enclosure inside that, giving you easy and cheap access for more hard drives. Then you can make full-disk backups and, in a pinch, boot from the external drive.