External 4 bay sata case, with firewire output?

[snek11]

I'm having a hard time finding an enclosure that would house 2 to 4 sata drives, with a firewire connection.

Basically I have a desktop with 3 250gb sata drives in it. I'm planning on moving to a new city where I'll probably be on the move a lot more. So I'm going to get a notebook (maybe I'll even make the jump to the darkside...a mac) but I need storage.

I guess I could just sell off the drives used, and just buy a few external drives. I'm hoping I could save some cash and put all the drives I have in an enclosure and connect it to the laptop through firewire. That should be good for burning dvds right?

All I'm seeing are enclosures with IDE to SATA or SATA to SATA connections. Anyone know where I should look? Or is this not the best solution?

[drjtech]

You may not like the price, $549.98:

Four SATA HDD Hardware RAID 0/1 Firewire 800 + USB 2.0 Enclosure

SATAVault SS-401 Series (2004.07) 3.5" SATA HDD External RAID Subsystem The SS-401U is an advance-designed product for SATA external RAID solution. For taking the maximum advantage of lower-Cost and High performance, SS-401U not only provides the 1394b+USB2.0 host interface for selection but also supports 4 SATA hard drives with largest capacity up to 2.0 TB under RAID 0 (Stripping). It is not only a small & professional RAID subsystem but a best partner for data storage security purpose that offer to small business and SOHO group.

-drj

[drjtech]

You might consider just keeping your desktop as a fileserver. Stash it in a corner where it's out of the way. You don't need a monitor / mouse / keyboard connected to it. Hook it up to your wired or wireless network and away you go. Cheaper than a new enclosure and probably not much bigger.

-drj

[snek11]

Ouch, I took a look at that site, pretty expensive for what I'd like to accomplish. I'd like to keep this desktop, but I really won't have room for it. I'm going to be living in New York City so will have to learn to live in a smaller spaces. It seems I may be moving a lot initially as well so I don't want anything too bulky to lug around. Goodbye 21" monitor=)

I think I'm going to just sell the drives. Then look for a large external drive...maybe a multibay enclosure but for PATA which seems to be a lot cheaper. Do you think firewire is necassary or could I get away with USB 2.0? Going to be burning files from the external drive...accessing video, audio files as well.