External hard drive enclosures

zybar · « **on:** 12 Nov 2006, 02:59 pm »

What is your favorite one?

How much should one pay for an enclosure?

Does anybody have any experience using an enclosure that supports IDE and SATA drives?

Thanks,

George

Val · « **Reply #1 on:** 12 Nov 2006, 04:08 pm »

There are many good ones but some of the cheap ones do not have an on-off switch. I like the Rosewill RX-350 ($31, USB, 1-touch backup) and the AMC HD6-U2FW ($43, USB and Firewire, bootable).

jonwb · « **Reply #2 on:** 12 Nov 2006, 04:22 pm »

These guys have a pretty good selection of external drive encolsures:

http://www.geeks.com/products_sc.asp?Cat=104

Robert57 · « **Reply #3 on:** 12 Nov 2006, 05:31 pm »

I have been planning on buying a couple of OWC Mercury Elite Pro AL enclosures, or, more likely, complete 500-750 GB HD packages, for my music library. They are not the cheapest around but have a solid reutation for reliability, ample connections (USB and fire wire hubs available), and are fairly quiet. I also like that they include EMC Retrospect back-up software if you buy an enclosure with a big HD. OWC typically uses the best Seagate drives. Prices are reasonable for the quality, IMO.

I am hoping these well-built enclosures will help prolong the life of the drive, since most of the cheaper external HD's (LaCie) seem to fail with horrifying frequency. Anyone have any experience with these OWC Elite AL drives?

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/hard-drives/External-Enclosures/
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/1394/USB/EliteAL/

Rob

tvyankee · « **Reply #4 on:** 12 Nov 2006, 05:44 pm »

hey

i use this one and i think it's built well and has never given me any trouble.

http://www.macally.com/spec/usb/storage_device/phr_100su.html

hope this helps.

kenscott30 · « **Reply #5 on:** 12 Nov 2006, 05:48 pm »

Very nice JBOD (just a bunch of drives) forum.....

http://thedambook.com/smf/index.php?board=2.0

different hard ware mfgs

http://www.macgurus.com/info/storehome.php

and

http://www.cooldrives.com/sata-enclosure.html

and

http://www.granitedigital.com/

I have a firmtek enclosure with 2 500 gig drives running of a macbookpro. Best of luck

ken

shokunin · « **Reply #6 on:** 12 Nov 2006, 06:12 pm »

Hey George,

What size 2.5" or 3.5" and what's your intended usage 24/7, backup only, need removable storage? Most of the 3.5" enclosures I've used were junk, heat death traps. Others enclosures with cheap fans eventually became loud and annoying as the fan bearing wore down. I've been using a couple of IDE USB cables that have no enclosure, They simply plug into the drive and a have an extern 4 molex plug to plug into the power supply. This is nice since I change out the drive by unplugging the IDE connector and the molex plug and plug in a new drive. I don't use these 24/7 as it's only for temporary backups.

Glenn

Folsom · « **Reply #7 on:** 12 Nov 2006, 08:05 pm »

Venus DS3. I recommend it and use it. It is damn near silent. It is also built very well. It has an adjustable power plug for different harddrives, aluminium enclosure with very smart venting that pulls air in from outside and out the back I believe. There is a reason it is ranked so highly on Neweggs ranking system. It also looks very nice, has a nice on off button, and comes in different connection flavors.