[by Berger] [from Some Actual Apple Macintosh Questions]

On Firewire cases:

I’ve been through a number of external cases - both cheap and not so cheap - and have settled into a couple that work very well for the way I do business.

I go through a bunch of drives per year because I save all of my PSD build files for clients so I can re-purpose for other jobs. I like a tray system and this one from Stardom has worked well for me for the past couple of years. You can buy separate trays for SATA and IDE. I use both 400FW and 800FW/USB2 versions. About $100 for the 400 and $125 for the 800/USB. Trays have been $10 each through newegg, but they don’t carry them any more and I’ve seen them going fro about $22 on average. I bought about 15 trays within the last 2 years - they all work perfectly. I keep the loaded trays in my fire safe when I’m not accessing files.

http://www.stardom.com.tw/sohotank%20u61b.htm

WibeTech re-brands them and sells them for much more:
http://www.wiebetech.com/products/traydock.php

I also use a medium priced smaller case from ADS and I keep the outer case off and then I can drop a bare drive in really fast. This has a fan at the bottom: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817145657 $50 from newegg. I picked a couple up from frys for $35 each about a year ago. Check the other views out at newegg to see the fan/tray. It has a sliding power connector to adjust for different drives.

FWIW. I’ve been rolling my own (well HD cases too) for several years now, and these two systems have been pretty much bomb-proof. A couple of no-brand cheapies have not worked out as well.