Ask Engadget: Best external hard drive enclosure?
By Darren Murph 
posted Mar 26th 2009 10:41PM
posted Mar 26th 2009 10:41PM
No need to check your LCDs, folks -- this is happening. This is this week's rendition of Ask Engadget, and if you'd rather your own question be in this space next week, shoot us a good one at ask at engadget dawt com. "Like any good geek, I have upgraded my MacBook's hard disk many times, and have all the old 2.5-inch SATA disks sitting in a pile. I'd like to put them in a case, but the enclosures I see are either very expensive or look hideous and unreliable. I'd love to get some recommendations for dependable, fairly-priced portable enclosures; USB's a must, but FireWire 400, then FireWire 800 then eSATA would be bonuses, as would any extra features."
So, HDD upgraders -- what kind of case (or cases) did you procure in order to keep using those displaced drives? Any great stories of success / failure? Let us know, would ya?
Western Digital
WD doesn't make empty boxes AFAIK
+1 From Me, I'm guilty of buying a WD JUST for its case lol there sleek and very nice!
USB/ESATA combo.
Best of both worlds. -fast ESATA loading with USB convenience.
I'll be using my to carry DVD ISOs to play on my netbook.
I just bought a Rosewell enclosure from Newegg, but I'm waiting for the right drive to come along at the right price.
I like my WD - but after discovering ADDONICS -
"This new Portable Dual Drive RAID enclosure accommodates up to two 2.5" SATA hard drives . ."
YES folks - a mini RAID of your very own! only $99
http://www.addonics.com/products/enclosures/AE25RDESU.asp
I know where my money is going!
how about the media player external hard drive enclosures off ebay? there is cheap and good quality versions. I have one and they kick ass.
Frreenas box works like acharm for wireless remote backups i no its not an inclosure but for 200 bucks you can build teh neccisary barebones pc.
Hell, screw $200. Go pick up any old machine whose BIOS is able to handle very large hard disks, or whose PCI slots can be loaded with SATA controllers. That's about it. A 400 MHz Pentium II with 128 MB of RAM and a cheap NIC is more than enough for running FreeNAS. I'd estimate between $10-$30, not including hard disks.
I am using the thermaltake hdd dock. It allows you to use any 2.5 or 3.5 sata drive and remove them . Just like a cartridge on a super nintendo.
Has both esata and usb2 ports.
correction: Ask Engadget *READERS*
What is up with that? give the readers credit! jeez.
I'm very happy with my VANTEC NEXSTAR 3 NST-260SU-BL Aluminum 2.5" Blue USB 2.0 & eSATA External Enclosure... its cheap, light, cool, quiet, doesn't require extra power, and has esata for performance.
I don't miss firewire, and i figure esata is the way of the future...
MacPower Pleiades , it matches a PowerMac G5 of Mac Pro perfectly. And really, you cant beat that.
OWC has some great enclosures
Cheap and right to the point
Don't agree. I have an OWC 2.5" box.
Good:
- Rock-solid construction
- USB, FW400,FW800
Bad:
- Large and heavy thanks to a giant aluminium heatsink
- Hard to open/close, many screws, have to take the whole thing apart to swap a drive
- Ultra-bright red and blue LED lights. Annoying and pointless, they light up the whole room at night.
Overall this is too big and heavy for a 2.5" enclosure.
Ah-greed. I have three OWC enclosures and a Burly. the OWC enclosures are pretty much the You-Get-What-You-Pay-For versions of the Burly. They have the same chipset, but much less padding. However, for the price, they are the best out there. And their portable enclosure is a must.
I have an old nexxtech enclosure that cost me 10 dollars after rebate/discount. Works like a charm, looks fine for costing 10 dollars. One reason why circuit city was nice to me.
i have 2 'mad dog' that were inexpensive
(got them on ebay) one 3.5, one 2.5
2 no name 1.8 from an old 30g ipod drive
and an 80 gig archos 380- also ebay.
slide them in - plug them in- access.
i keep the screws out of the 3.5 if i need
to switch one of the others.
Coolmax HD-250L-eSATA 2.5 inch USB&eSATA-SATA Leather HDD Enclosure
it has usb and esata
you can get it over at ewiz for a bit under $25
I myself have bought two of these and have no complaints for the over half a year i've had these for... in my opinion these are stylish!!!(very small and compact)
Looks neat. Does it require screws to open / close, and how many?
it has two tiny screws at the sides ( the silver colored part with the connections comes off ) a screw driver is included.
the screws are flattened so they blend in.
This one does look really nice, great price, aluminum, eSATA + USB (very necessary for me), and the leather is a great bonus. I'm actually thinking of picking one up! Thanks for the reccomendation.
Agreed. I have several and also recommend them to clients. The leather is hot.
COOLMAX HD-250B-eSATA
I agree, Coolmax makes one great case. I have this one, very solid feel and small, doesn't add any bulk to the 2.5-incher. Great speed and got it off mwave.com 6 months ago on sale for like $12.
I've gone through dozens of different 2.5" enclosures and this HD-250L-eSATA from CoolMax is my hands-down favorite. The Sunplus SATALink SPIF225A-HL231 chipset performs admirably, the leather is classy, and it comes with a nice case with magnetic clasp. (Don't worry. They insist there's no reason to be concerned about the magnet in the clasp.)
Thank god another apple post I was getting the shakes
This has nothing to do with Apple. He could have easily said Dell, Toshiba, or HP.
This 3.5" HDD enclosure works great for me. I have purchased two and love them. USB, and eSATA. However, the eSATA requires a reboot, don't know if that's normal for eSATA.... anyways, it's clean looking and have had no problems with it. and its only $30ish bux at newegg. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817392016
I have one of these, and it works just fine as well.
As JP pointed out, VANTEC makes a nice SATA enclosure.
I went with the VANTEC Nexstar 3 IDE version (as you've probably deducted, I had an extra IDE drive lying around). It's got the bare minimum, but works for what I needed. It has a solid design, so it's not flimsy and it has a status LED light on the front that you can disconnect if you so choose. I know it's no eSATA/SATA combo of awesomeness, but if you've got an extra IDE drive lying around that you want to add to your system, I'd recommend this one.
All in all, VANTEC's products are solid. You really can't go wrong with them.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817145133
Yup, Vantec has worked for me (where others have disappointed). I have the NexStar MX setup with a RAID 1 (Mirrored 500 GB discs) and 2.5" enclosure, too, for portable goodness. Solid build,
I personally use the Thermaltake HDD dock.
I've always put my old hard drives in Vantec enclosures. They're pretty reliable and i haven't had any problems. USB bus powered and i'm good to go!
Yeah, I've had 2 Vantec NexStar enclosures (latest one SX). Both work great and add very very minimal size to the drive.
Yeah, Vantec NexStar for low-power drives that don't need active (fan) cooling. laptop drives and WD Green drives are fine, others may get very warm and shorten their lifespans.
I agree, I always use Vantec, they look and work great.
Give me firewire or give me death.
I'm sorry...I have nothing to add to this apart from my hatred of USB hard drives.
x2 USB sucks for data transfer. Firewire FTW!
eSATA owns your silly firewire
I am on a Mac, a good USB drive can hold its own vs Firewire. My Toshiba external drive, which is the best USB enclosure I know gets up to 30MB/s on backup. Compare that to my cheap USB enclosures which get anywhere from 10MB - 20MB in the best case.
My FW800 external box gets 50MB/s max. Yeah, it's a lot better than the USB but it's also much more expensive and not _that_ much better, really. This is on a MacBook Pro.
BTW I would recommend the Toshiba but they don't sell them without hard drive installed. Still looking for something like this which can also be easily opened for drive swapping.
Let me know when eSATA is as prevalent as firewire.
Also, unless you're raiding drives, you won't be reaching the max potential of eSATA anyway.
>> "Let me know when eSATA is as prevalent as firewire."
Since SATA is the standard interface for hard drives these days... adding an eSATA bracket to a computer is easy using something like this: http://www.cooldrives.com/essaii3gbexp.html
I bought an eSATA enclosure and it came with one of those brackets. Boom, instant eSATA. It can't get much easier than that.
Plus, most new motherboards have an eSATA port built in... I don't recall any motherboards with a Firewire 800 port.
> "Also, unless you're raiding drives, you won't be reaching the max potential of eSATA anyway."
And if you want RAID... Firewire 800 is capped at 100 MB/s... which averages about 80 MB/s in the real world.
A G-tech eSATA G-Raid3 is rated at 200 MB/s... and averages 175 MB/s... which is more than twice as fast as Firewire 800.
Firewire is now a bag of hurt. Didn't you know that?
I have my backup drive in an Antec MX-1 that I found on sale for ~$30. It is a nice enclosure with a built-in fan that is pretty quiet and seems to keep the drive cool. It has both USB and eSATA. (http://www.antec.com/Believe_it/product.php?id=NDc=)
Use a hot-swappable dock, I love it. No enclosures, just raw, sexy disks!
i'm using antec's mx-1 and hasnt failed on me yet. the only thing i regret was spending more money on a bigger enclosure for more hdd's haha. i'm not sure if this can hold 2.5 though, threw away my box somewhere
I have been using one of these for about a year. Works great and I think this will be a better solution for all those SATA drives that you have lying around.
http://snurl.com/en7qt
2nd themansterman!
I got two Vantec enclusures, one for my old 60 Gb HDD from my first white macbook and the second one for a 160Gb HDD.
They are dirt cheap... less than $15 (I think I got it for $10-12), only USB (2.0), no FireWire though.
Small, pretty reliable, and aluminum case
I second Vantec, excellent enclosures
NexStar MX 3.5" SATA to USB/eSATA Dual Bay RAID Hard Drive Enclosure
http://www.vantecusa.com/front/product/view_detail/277
That is the best one I have ever used! Raid 1 means I will not loose data if a drive fails. (It supports Raid 0 and JBOD, and just a pair of drives)
I have 3 of them right now. I plan to purchase 1 more.
It is easy to setup. (Dip switches set the RAID mode) It is made of metal so it is like a huge heat sync. AND it even has a fan for active cooling!
It also has USB and ESATA connectors. It uses SATA drives.
2 of my boxes have a pair of 1tb drives, and one of them has a pair of 1.5tb drives. (All RAID 1)
They do have a less expensive version that does not support RAID, just JBOD and a pair of disks.
http://www.vantecusa.com/front/product/view_detail/213