[conspire] questions re firewire pci card and firewire enclosure for 30GB hard drive

[Darlene Wallach]

Rick Moen wrote:
> Quoting Darlene Wallach (freepalestin at dslextreme.com):
> 
> 
>>However, my current internal hard drive is IDE (ATA) so
>>the scsi external disk drive enclosure wouldn't fit
>>my hardware needs.
> 
> 
> Darlene --
> 
> You can probably run any reasonably long IDE ("PATA") ribbon cable out the
> back of your box, and over to the external drive box.  It's not pretty,
> and is frowned on, but it'd probably work just fine.
> 
> (There are length limits for the IDE spec, and ribbon cables both emit
> and are susceptible to RFI.  Thus, they're not really intended for
> external use.  But, in a pinch, you can use them that way.)
> 
> This of course would be an alternative to your Firewire plan -- and
> would suffer the disadvantage of not being casually unpluggable, unlike
> Firewire.
> 

Rick,

Thank you - I would rather go with the Firewire - esp since
the IDE ribbon cable in external mode is not its intended
use.

Darlene