I have a 1.42 mini with an ATA drive. If my reading of this earlier post—
[forums.macresource.com] —and my web search is correct, then I can hook up an external SATA drive (via firewire) with no problems. Is this true?
I had been under the impression that ATA and SATA were not compatible, but that impression was formed years ago and may no longer be correct, if it ever was.

---

And we should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once.
—Friedrich Nietzsche
Western Massachusetts

It will work.

SATA and ATA are NOT compatible, however, once you put the SATA (or ATA) drive in a FireWire or USB enclosure, it doesn't matter what's inside the enclosure, all you care about is if your Mac can use the FireWire or USB connection. So it will work.

If the bridge-board on the enclosure has a FireWire connector on it then you can connect it to your computer via FireWire.

The drive in the enclosure may be SATA or PATA. It doesn't matter which when you connect the enclosure to your computer. The bridge does all of the translation necessary to "speak" to the drive via FireWire.

...

These days, I recommend that people get enclosures with at least two interfaces. See this enclosure that has both FireWire and USB connectors, for example.

There are several reasons for this recommendation. Among them, some Macs do not have FireWire ports; Most PCs do not have FireWire ports; Sometimes a port on a computer (or on the bridge of an enclosure) will die and having an alternate way to get your data on and off is handy.

...

Internally, your Mini has a PATA (Ultra ATA) drive. If you want to replace the internal drive, you need a drive with similar (size and interface) specifications.

That has nothing to do with external drives.

just to clarify for my own head, the SATA and PATA connectors are different so the guts of the enclosure needs to have both connectors inside and/or is there an adaptor?

Thabk you all.

---

And we should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once.
—Friedrich Nietzsche
Western Massachusetts

Quote
Fritz
just to clarify for my own head, the SATA and PATA connectors are different so the guts of the enclosure needs to have both connectors inside and/or is there an adaptor?

SATA and PATA connectors are different.

SATA


PATA


The guts of the enclosure will typically have just one interface inside -- either SATA or PATA.

Some enclosures have both SATA and PATA connectors inside, but they are rare.

There are adapters to connect PATA drives to SATA host ports, but space inside a drive-enclosure is usually too tight to use one.

thanks. as I figured