Macally PHR-100AF FireWire External Enclosure (IEEE 1394a)

The physical design of the aluminum case is the best I've seen, though it uses an external power supply which I dislike as it adds significant clutter under the desk, and limits portability.My real issue with the product however is that there is no power switch, nor any means of spinning down the hard disk other than pulling the power plug. I contacted MacAlly tech support and they suggested I power the unit through a switchable power strip. They also confirmed that the drive can't be spin down through software, such as OSX's energy saver control panel. Frankly, there is no excuse for omitting such a simple, and inexpensive, feature from a rather pricey product. I will be returning the product.Add a power switch, + 2 stars.Move the power supply inside the case, +1 star.In the cases defense, the LED read/write/power indicator looks awesome!

I bought this to house a spare HD that was still in its original packaging, and install OSX to be the primary operating drive for a Mac Mini G4 (its internal drive lacking).Unfortunately this enclosure does not allow hard drive error correction or S.M.A.R.T. to passthrough to the host. This means that when sectors go bad, the operating system will not know about them, keep going as if nothing's wrong, and then compound the problem by creating more bad sectors, eventually causing the drive to not be bootable, and even worse, not mountable. Which means you have to buy a recovery program for at least $100 to get your files out.I just had to spend days recovering from this failure, and am limping along with the much smaller and slower internal HD.If you only use the PHR-100AF as a backup drive enclosure instead of one that is accessed most hours every day, you will probably suffer less data loss, because backups are done best in the early morning hours with the computer not otherwise in use.

The enclosure has a very clean finish with good workmanship. Easy to install and get going. The light is a little too bright and can be a big distraction if directly visible.Note: this unit is Firewire ONLY and does NOT have USB.

As another reviewer noted -- newer versions of this case HAVE A POWER SWITCH (the one I ordered August, 2005 has one).The enclosure is well-designed and works very well. The hard drive sits snugly and does not wobble around at all (I used a Seagate 3.5" 160 GB drive): it survived a drop off of a chair already (in a bag, but there wasn't that much cushioning).Installation is dead-easy: open the enclosure, put the included screws into the drive, set into the mounting brackets, tighten screws, close enclosure. Takes a small Phillips head screwdriver, which would be necessary to install a drive anywhere, anyway.The aluminum case does a good job of drawing heat away from the drive, but I would suggest using the included drive stand if heat is an issue. The stand slides on snugly and has been very stable.The drive was bootable under Mac OS X (10.3.9).Includes the Firewire cable (6pin to 6pin), and a power brick. An internal power supply would be nice, but I'm willing to live with a power brick for an economical price.My only complaint is the LED, which is rather bright (blue when on, red/magenta for read/write access): it's a bit overdone (an inch long LED is overkill here, I think). But not worth taking a star off of the rating.

Do NOT buy two of these. You can not use them together. Also, hard drives will never spin down when idle - which means your drives will die much quicker unless you manually turn the drive on and off every time you need it.

I got these encosures for a client of mine that needed to keep her data from a really old G4/350. She replaced this old Mac with a Mac Mini, and had two 80 GB ATA drives I suggested she put into FireWire enclosures for extra storage. Got the enclosures, put the drives in, hooked them up to the Mini, and got absolutely nothing.Panicked, I tried everyting I could think of to make them work. I brought them to my shop and hooked them up to my G4/867, and miraculously, they mounted and worked perfectly. Tried them again on the Mini, no dice.I went to Macally's website and searched the tech support database. It suggested that my problem lied in the fact that I was using Mac OS X v. 10.4 (Tiger) and my client was using 10.3.9 (Panther) on her Mini. Apparently, the firmware on these enclosures had problems in 10.3.9 but not 10.4. I downloaded the firmware updater and followed their instructions on how to update the firmware of the enclosures. Things went from bad to worse instantly.I updated the firmware as prescribed, restarted my G4, and the drives took a crap. They didn't even show up in Apple System Profiler or Disk First Aid. I went to a local computer retailer and bought two USB 2.0 drive enclosures, thinking the FireWire enclosures were toast. I installed the drives into these USB 2.0 enclosures and everything worked. They even worked fast and flawlessly on the Mac Mini.Stuck with two dead FireWire enclosures, I decided to send them back to Macally. Before I did, though, I put a spare 40 GB ATA drive into one of the enclosures. To my amazement, it worked! I don't know what the hiccup was with the two 80 GB drives, but the 40 GB drive works perfectly on my G4/867 in the Macally enclosure.I guess the moral of the story is be careful, and don't give up! Both enclosures work fine for me now. All it took was a little time and effort!