External Drive replacement/upgrade

Hello,
I currently have an external FireWire drive that uses a Segate Barracuda ATA IV drive Model # ST 380021A. The drive has issues and I want to upgrade the drive to a 250gb or 320gb drive. What is the largest drive that i can use in this one's place? Found some canidates on ebay like:

Seagate Barracuda 250 GB 7200RPM IDE ULTRA ATA HD
Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ATA/100 320GB Hard Drive
Seagate Barracuda 160GB ATA-100 IDE Internal Hard Drive
NEW SEAGATE 400GB IDE EIDE ATA INTERNAL HARD DRIVE 8MB
Seagate Hard drive 250 GB ST3250824AV ULTRA ATA NEW

Just need to know what I can replace the bum drive with. Thanks for the help!

 

First of all, welcome to the TSG forums...

Off the top of my head, I'd say the answer as to which Seagate drive you can use in the external FireWire housing depends on the specs of the FireWire controller chip... My only personal experience is with USB external drives; some of the USB controller chips are limited to 250BG / 300GB as a maximum size. Your best bet is to check directly with the maker of your FireWire housing; if you can find an online webpage advertising the housing, it might well provide a list of the maximum HDD size the housings can handle... If not, you can always look through a FAQ, if one is provided on the maker's website...

The ODDS are that ANY Seagate drive with an IDE / ATA interface will work with that FireWire housing, though it MIGHT have a certain size limit (in GB) that you'd have to be aware of. I'd suggest that you open the housing to be SURE it accepts ATA drives, though I can't imagine you'd need any OTHER type of interface (SATA or SCSI, to name only two)...

Wish I could be more specific, but I think you'll find the answer soon enough by visiting the maker's webpage and getting your answers straight from the source...

Good luck with this; let us know what you learn. If you need more help, post here again with more SPECIFIC details about that housing, and maybe someone can point you in the right direction...

 

I have a Club Mac Firewire enclosure with a label that states:

Segate Barracuda IV 80GB Drive
ClubMac Universal 50W

3hv03jj7
375628

I tried emailing tech support at Club Mac and got NO WHERE! Thanks for the help in advance!
Phease let me now if you need any more info....

 

OK, I'll research this to see if I can find any specific details about size limits for that enclosure, and post anything I find so we'll both know...

Keep your fingers crossed; you might be limited to ~200GB, or you might get lucky and be able to use a larger HDD. With any luck, we'll know in a few days...

 

Puppy....
Many thanks for youe assistance....

 

bump....any word yet?