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Data Storage

External Hard Drive Enclosures? 82

Posted by Cliff from the dance-of-the-storage-peripherals dept.
AdmiralWeirdbeard wonders: "I've been looking to put together an external hard drive for use with my Mac Mini. Obviously, the built-in storage is not sufficient. However, I know nothing about what makes an external enclosure good or bad, and have found nothing but mixed reviews for even the best rated enclosures on Newegg and Amazon. Every model seems to have at least one person complaining of an enclosure that fried the drive through overheating. The literature I've read seems to focus on the pros and cons of the various enclosures for big (50+gb) weekly or even daily system backups. I dont need anything for regular backups, but rather just for storage of my music, movies, and other miscellaneous data. Any ideas on the pros and cons of fan/fanless, construction materials, and different brands out there?"
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External Hard Drive Enclosures? More

External Hard Drive Enclosures?

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  • Answer: MacAlly (Score:5, Informative)

    by failedlogic ( 627314 ) on Tuesday October 11, 2005 @06:53PM (#13769427)
    As an iMac G5 user:

    I have a MacAlly firewire HDD enclosure it works great. If you Mini has firewire, stick with Wirewire. This one also has USB. I've yet to try the USB. Check the chipset the board uses inside the Oxford 911 firewire is the best firewire (according to reviews, I've yet to test it). Again, IMO the MacAlly is superb. I also have one of their 5 1/4" firewire enclosures for a DVD burner. Works great.

    One brand I would avoid though: Bytecc. I have one of their USB enclosures. It rarely, if ever, mounts in OSX. It wasn't such a problem in XP though. I don't know if the fault is with the chipset (its a VIA, surprised?!) or with Apple supporting the chipset. Overall, though the transfer rate (with the same drive) is much slower than the MacAlly.

    If you want a cool looking one, there is a firewire enclosure that looks like a mini-G5 aluminum tower. I'd have bought one but the fees to import into Canada would have been a bit high.

    As an aside, when are SATA enclosures going to be more readily avaialble. The only ones out now have a premium price attached to it.

    There. Now digest all the information. I always type more than I need to! :)
    • As another iMac G5 user, I have a generic, Oxford chipset, Firefire caddy, with a 250gb disk in it.

      Works like a dream.

    • Re:Answer: MacAlly (Score:3, Informative)

      by NotoriousQ ( 457789 )
      I second MacAlly. Works with a 300Gb drive. Good fanless (I think) cooling. Firewire. Never had a single problem with my linux box. Only paid about $10 more than a generic USB2 enclosure.

    • Re:Answer: MacAlly (Score:3, Informative)

      by Phreakiture ( 547094 )

      As an aside, when are SATA enclosures going to be more readily avaialble. The only ones out now have a premium price attached to it.

      This will probably happen when it becomes necessary due to a low availability of PATA drives. Don't expect much benefit, though. Firewire 400 transfers at 50MB/s ((400Mbit/s) / (8bit/B) = 50MB/s) and Firewire 800 at 100MB/s (similar math). As such, the Firewire is the bottleneck (at least from a signalling perspective).

      On Firewire 400, an ATA/66 drive will only show a

      • I think he may be thinking of an enclosure that uses SATA as the interface between it and the computer, not a firewire enclosure with a SATA drive in it.

        • I think he may be thinking of an enclosure that uses SATA as the interface between it and the computer, not a firewire enclosure with a SATA drive in it.

          Ah, good point; I didn't think of that. Kind of akin to the SCSI enclosures you use with older Sun workstations.

  • Some enclosures require external power from an AC adapter. Some get their power from the USB bus. How can you tell if a particular hard drive can work in a USB-powered enclosure?
    • Lack of AC adaptor in the box? ;)
    • I'm not aware of any external drives that use standard hard drives (i.e., not flash memory based) that can be powered via the USB bus. Maybe some of the tiny 1.8" drives can be.

      Most externals based on 2.5" drives can be powered by the firewire bus.

      Any of the above are going to be more expensive that a drive based on the 3.5" form factor. Unless you expect to be moving this drive around a lot and using it with different systems, I'd stick with a 3.5" drive for performance and cost considerations.

      • Re:Another question about enclosures (Score:1, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        2.5" drives can be powered over USB. Most of the 2.5" enclosures I looked at have 2 usb plugs, if extra power is needed. So far my 60GB 2.5" drive is running fine plugged into one port.
      • Most USB ports are able to power laptop (1.8") hard drives without a problem. I have 5 different makes of 1.8" enclosure, all of which work flawlessly. They fit in your pocket, need only 1 small cable, and they hardly even get warm. This has been my solution for portable storage for almost 2 years now, and with 80Gb and 100Gb 1.8" drives coming down in price it's a really effective solution.

        I've been paying between £10 and £15 for these handy things.
      • Er, my bad, I meant 2.5" not 1.8"! Long live metric!
    • Bus powered enclosures only come in 2.5" varieties, and even then, high rpm 12mm 2.5" HDs sometimes draw more power than the USB bus can deliver. The Firewire bus can deliver more power and should be able to power any 2.5" HD. No 3.5" HDs can be powered by a USB or Firewire bus to my knowledge.
      • Yeah, 3.5" drives need both 12V and 5V lines, whereas USB supplies only 5V.
        • The voltage rails are not the problem, it's the current sourcing. USB will only source 500mA of current per port. Most 3.5in drives draw almost that much on the 5V rail for electronics. This is before the 1A need on the 12V rail, for motors.
      • I have a 5400rpm 2.5" 40GB drive (I think it's a toshiba) in a CoolMax combo [coolmaxusa.com] case. It came with a funky two USB connector cable (two on the PC side, one on the drive side). All the machines I've tested it with require both to be plugged in to the PC (or laptop) for the drive to spin up. Firewire works OK except on my ibook it won't spin up if the ibook isn't plugged in (in which case I use the usb cable with only the red (power) connector plugged into the ibook to provide the extra power to make it spin). A

  • Avoid Ultra (Score:3, Informative)

    by macdaddy357 ( 582412 ) <macdaddy357@hotmail.com> on Tuesday October 11, 2005 @07:00PM (#13769483)
    Avoid the plastic one from Ultra being sold at Tiger Direct. Its power supply is woefully inadequate for most hard drives. It does not even have separate 12v and 5v lines, a must for any WD drive, and many other power hungry ones as well. A Samsung 30 gig 5400 rpm drive is the best mine can accomodate. Also, the thing has no on/off switch unless they have re-designed it, and has a terrible vibration problem that will make yuu crazy with the noise unlesss you set it sideways on something soft like a plastic anti-skid pad.

    If you get a drive cage made of aluminum, there is no need for a noise-making and dust-sucking fan.

    • If you get a drive cage made of aluminum, there is no need for a noise-making and dust-sucking fan.

      Seconded,

      I have several that say, "Metal Gear Box" on them and they work very well. Cool and Quiet. USB2 and Firewire - Prolific chip. I have 3 hanging off my Mini now. The good ones say "Substance" in smaller letters and are small and unobtrusive. Another says "Hard Drive" and has an annoying blue LED bar on the front that blinks with activity. It's also larger only to accommodate the LED bar. LAN-party

  • External MacMini Drives (Score:5, Interesting)

    by spiralscratch ( 634649 ) on Tuesday October 11, 2005 @07:01PM (#13769493)
    There are a number of drives available that are specifically designed to sit perfectly under the Mini itself and feature the same basic color/design/etc. Most also feature USB2 and Firewire hubs. I think LaCie and Other World Computing have models, as well as a couple other manufacturers.

    Try skimming MacWorld, Macintouch, XLR8yourmac, etc. for reviews.

    I believe that the general consensus is that drives with an Oxford USB/firewire to IDE bridge are best, though I've not had the opportunity to verify this myself.

  • VANTEC Nexstar line (Score:5, Informative)

    by Stigmata669 ( 517894 ) on Tuesday October 11, 2005 @07:04PM (#13769513)
    I purchased a very inexpensive Vantec Nexstar USB2.0/Firewire enclosure, and have been very impressed. The plastic of the enclosure feels cheap, however it comes with rubber HD mounts so that you isolate any drive vibrations from the desk/ground.

    For any enclosure, the two things to look for are: type of bridge i.e. Oxford900/911/922, and whether there is an integrated fan.

    The Oxford900 is the legacy chip, do not buy one. The Oxford911 is compatible with large HDs and the 922 is Firewire800. I use my enclosure for backup so heat was not an issue, however if you plan on using the drive full time, or as a boot drive, look into a more expensive enclosure that comes with a fan.

    If you want to keep with the Mac Mini styling and have extra $$ to burn, consider these: http://www.123macmini.com/accessories/guide/enclos ures.html [123macmini.com]

    otherwise the Vantecs are fine: http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.asp?Subm it=Go&DEPA=0&type=&description=nexstar&Category=0& minPrice=&maxPrice=&Go.x=0&Go.y=0 [newegg.com]
    • I agree!

      I have both Nextstar 2 and 3 enclosures (USB 2.0) and I'm quite happy with both. The Nexstar 2 is made with cheap plastic, but since it holds my backup hard drive it doesn't matter too much (the drive is plugged for not very long anyways). The rubber paddings are quite nice too.

      Having this enclosure, I needed another one, to hold my primary external storage on my laptop. I bought the Nexstar 3 since I found the NS2 good enough, and because the NS3 is made of aluminium instead of plastic (since this
      • For your purposes the Nexstar 2 will suck. I have one. It uses a Prolific chipset which is considered inferior to the standard Oxford one--I use it via firewire on my iBook (which you'll want to do since USB is in practice much slower with macs) and had to find a PC with USB to flash the firmware.

        The reason I dislike it the most is that it's very dumb. Superior enclosures like the Macally one, and I assume the Oxford ones, are smart enough to spin down the drives when not in use, or when the mac is put to s

        • Re:VANTEC Nexstar line (Score:3, Interesting)

          by cowbutt ( 21077 )
          For your purposes the Nexstar 2 will suck. I have one. It uses a Prolific chipset which is considered inferior to the standard Oxford one

          I wondered how many posts I'd need to read before someone ranted about Prolific's USB/1394-ATA bridge chips. Not many!

          I submitted an entry for Linux's unusual_devs.h to say that the PL-3507 USB/1394 bridge misreports the number of blocks by 1 (a common bug, based on a misinterpretation of the SCSI spec, IIRC). That's fair enough - everyone gets stuff wrong from time to

    • The fans are useless. Out of 23 external USB drives, only half of them still have working fans. They burn out and stop running very quickly. I've found this to be true with almost every encloser. At least, the ones under $30/ea. Because after all, if I'm going to spend much more than that per encloser, I might as well just be building a couple extra computers and dumping the drives right into them.
    • I purchased 6 of those Nextar enclosures, of the type that are the first two listed at the link you gave.

      The enclosure is not much bigger than the drive itself, and it's difficult to jigger the drive into there. They cut the space way too close.

      After a few weeks of use, one of them failed; when I handled the failed enclosure, I could hear something rattling around inside. Inspection showed that the back of the plastic molex connector was pushing up against the circuit board, and it had flaked off a small

  • Nicest one I've seen (Score:5, Informative)

    by wheresdrew ( 735202 ) on Tuesday October 11, 2005 @07:17PM (#13769593) Journal
    Newertech has a great one called the miniStack [newertech.com]. USB 2.0 or Firewire, and has hubs for both built-in. It's available as a bare case or with a drive preinstalled.
  • Before I purchased my Mini I purchased a 250 GB LaCie (external) USB2 hard drive.

    If the order of purchases was to be reversed, I would purchase a Firewire/USB2 external hard drive, which would be bootable on the Mini.

    http://www.lacie.com/products/family.htm?id=10007 [lacie.com]

    - Mike -

    • But... while lots of USB drives come formatted in DOS style, and
      require a reformat, there shouldn't be any reason a USB2 drive won't
      boot a Mac Mini. It sure would boot my old iMac. After
      putting a HFS extended file system on it, and (OS 10.3+) enabling journalling,
      of course.

  • Have Fan? (Score:5, Informative)

    by thegrassyknowl ( 762218 ) on Tuesday October 11, 2005 @07:24PM (#13769642)
    One of the things that always strikes me about a lot of USB hard disk enclosures is how tiny they are and how hot disks run when in them. Try and get one with a small fan in the back. It will move a bit of air and help your disk to last longer. If you can't get one with a fan and portability isn't an issue, try and get a 5.25" one and a couple of mounting brackets for a 3.5" disk. The extra room will mean the disk runs slightly cooler. The 5.25" ones tend to have removable front panels too, so you can stick in a grille with a filter instead of a blank panel to improve ventilation.

    If you're using it with your Mac Mini, I'd suggest that having another brick to plug into the wall isn't as big of an issue than if you were using it with your Powerbook or something. Bus powered enclusures won't power a lot of bigger disks - the USB spec doesn't provide for more than about 2.5W on the whole bus, and you lose a bit in hubs and controllers as well so there's not much left to power the disk. FireWire can provide a bit more power, and I've seen bus-powered FireWire enclosures that work quite well (if you have the larger, powered, FireWire socket on the Mac Mini rather than the mini, non-powered, one).

    Make sure the enclosure is USB2 capable, and some come with FireWire as well. The dual support ones (in my experience) are more reliable and better built. FireWire is reportedly a bit faster than USB2 for sustained transfer rates, but I have never been able to demonstrate that.

    Don't buy a bay with a disk in it. You pay a fortune for them compared to buying a good bay and a disk separately. Seagate and Maxtor both have them. Sure, they work and are good for people who can't use a screwdriver but you pay a premium for some guy in Taiwan to use his screwdriver instead.

    • Re:Have Fan? (Score:3, Informative)

      by cgenman ( 325138 )
      If you don't mind modding your enclosure, the wire running into your drive should be serving up 12v of power on a standard molex connector... Just cut a hole in your casing and add a 12v fan to the side. Or really, add a 24 volt fan to the side, as that will run fast enough yet still be quiet.

      Other options include as was mentioned above getting an enclosure that will fit a 5.25" drive, but adding one of the aftermarket drive bay coolers to the deal. Again, try to get one whose fan speed you can turn down

  • Sabrent enclosure (Score:2, Informative)

    by codehead ( 14804 )
    After I upgraded my laptop's HD I got a SABRENT SBT-EKU25 External Enclosure [newegg.com] for the old drive. It's USB powered, it's incredibly lightweight and works great under Linux and Windows.
  • I have a couple of USB2 enclosures, and they tend to fail under linux. They work ok under windows on the same hardware, but if I do a lot of writing under linux, they stop working.

    I've talked to other people who have the same problem.

    Is this a hardware problem? Is it a matter of errors accumulating, and linux giving up, while windows keeps on plugging?

    • Re:Why do USB drives fail under linux? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by NotoriousQ ( 457789 ) on Tuesday October 11, 2005 @08:03PM (#13769925) Homepage
      I have seen it. It is a very curious problem. Linux, as far as I know, still sees the device, but the device stops responding. I think what happens is that linux feeds them data in a way that they should handle, but do not, due to bugs. And when they crash, linux does not reset them. The drives work in windows because those bugs have been found by testing done by manufacturer.

      At least this is what I think is happening. Any kdev willing to be more helpful?

      There is a similar problem with firewire, where, for some reason, the io gets reordered wrong and it confuses the drive. There is an option for serializing IO that works like a charm. My external firewire drive has an uptime of a few months now.
      • Thanks for posting...

        Could you give me a pointer to how you get your firewire drive to work? My enclosure handles both, but neither works well with stock configurations.

        • i just did:

          modprobe ohci1394
          modprobe sbp2

          and it showed up as a scsi device.
          if it does not I recommend scanning your dmesg for problems.

          I have also added added a parameter into modules.conf that made sbp2 module load with serialize_io=1. This slows down the io, but makes the requests linear, which seems to fix some issues.

          My biggest problem was that it was showing up as a scsi device, but not a disk. It took me 45 minutes to realize that the problem was that the enclosure was not plugged in :'(

          just a pointle

      • Re:Why do USB drives fail under linux? (Score:5, Informative)

        by Col. Klink (retired) ( 11632 ) on Tuesday October 11, 2005 @10:49PM (#13770705)
        I've seen this USB bug as well. The solution is to set CONFIG_SCSI_DEBUG_QUEUES=y ("Enable extra checks in new queuing code" under "SCSI Support" in the 2.4 series).
        • I have had this problem on over a dozen machines and several different distributions.

          I will definitely try out your suggestion. Is it possible to try it out by just recompiling a module, so I don't have to build a whole new kernel ? Some of the machines I wish to try this on are very difficult to physically access.

          Also, by "fix the bug", does this make the broken USB drives start working, or does it merely make any new drives you attach not fail ? I.e., how can I tell if I have fixed the problem ?
          • I just rebuilt the whole kernel and rebooted and never tried to fix a running system.

            USB drives that stopped working would always start working again after a reboot. Try writing a ton of data to the disk and if it shouldn't lock up. I have run an entire laptop off an external USB drive with no problems (except that the laptop became anchored to the USB drive, of course).
  • I have 1.92TB, 8 240GB drives, daisy-chained off of my PowerBook as I type.

    Yep, looking at my server it seems three people are downloading anime at the moment. Can't tell.

    400MHz G4, btw. Firewire 400.

  • 'Hardware RAID' external hard drive enclosure. (Score:3, Funny)

    by Halfbaked Plan ( 769830 ) on Tuesday October 11, 2005 @08:54PM (#13770234)
    I have a 'hard drive enclosure' here that you connect to simply by plugging in an ethernet jack. It has provisions for 12 hotswap SCSI drives and can be configured for hardware RAID.

    It's called an IBM PC Server 704, and it also has 4 pentium pro processors and some other stuff. The 'firmware' in it that provides access to it's storage to the machine 'expanded' by plugging into it is NetBSD.

    It's also the size of a conventional two-drawer file cabinet. You could install it on a platform with casters and call it portable. I suppose.

  • One thing to think about is how often you'll be schlepping this drive around. Back in the day I had a USB 1.1 enclosure that was made for an external CD-ROM so it was pretty large. It was a beast, and at some point I traded it in for a 3.5" Bytecc USB2/firewire enclosure that's about the size of a paperback book. This has been better, but it still requires an external power brick. If I were looking today, I'd get a large laptop drive (like the 100 GB, 7200 RPM Seagate Momentus) and a 2.5" enclosure that

  • Other World Computing (Score:3, Informative)

    by phillymjs ( 234426 ) <slashdot@stanTWAINgo.org minus author> on Tuesday October 11, 2005 @09:54PM (#13770470) Homepage Journal
    I picked up one of these [macsales.com] in the beginning of the year, and put a 200GB drive in it. I keep all my installers, client drive images, and utilities on it, divided over six partitions. It has FireWire 800, FireWire 400, and USB2 connectors.

    It replaced an identical enclosure that only offered FireWire 400 and USB2 that I bought a couple years ago, which had a 120GB drive in it.

    Both enclosures are fanless, but I never had a problem with either drive due to heat. They don't run 24/7, but I've had them on for fairly long stretches. My only gripe with them is very minor: the blue activity LED is friggin' blinding-- I ended up taping a small square of copy paper over it to mute it a little bit.

    ~Philly

  • Get Oxford911 based FW and stay away from Prolific (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mTor ( 18585 ) on Tuesday October 11, 2005 @11:09PM (#13770772)
    I've had 5 different HDD enclosures and from my experience Oxford 911 is the only chipset that works with FW devices. I have a Mac as well and FW is the way to go. It's much faster than USB2. Stay away from USB2.

    Also, whatever you buy, make sure it is not based on PROLIFIC chipset! It's an absolute crap and I've lost 2 different hard drives because of it. Prolific claims FW support when in fact its support is shoddy at best. You'll lose your data and, eventually, you'll lose your drive. If the chipset is not listed, it probably is a Prolific chipset. Seek enclosures that have Oxford911 in the name... just to make sure.

    Good luck!

  • no enclosure (Score:2, Insightful)

    by dwater ( 72834 )
    Consider not having an enclosure.

    I have several Wiebetech [wiebetech.com] Drive Docks that work just fine.

    I had the drives free standing on their side (to allow convection), or fixed to a big metal plate to distribute the heat. A desk fan would provide additional cooling

    Of course, they also sell enclosures, if you must.
  • Itty bitty fan and itty bitty vents did little to cool the drive.

    I now use it as a test sled for drives... without the plastic case. It's good for that. I may use it to convert an old SCSI box with a real fan into an external USB enclosure.
  • I've got a metal gear box, and it works pretty well. It has holes on all sides to let air through, and then a stand that you can have it on its side, if you are into that sort of thing. Its worked fine for me, and it was under $40 I think for the enclosure. They are not cheap, or was it $20....

    anyway try -> http://www.techimo.com/articles/i82.html [techimo.com]

  • If speed and capacity are not critical (Score:3, Informative)

    by WoTG ( 610710 ) on Tuesday October 11, 2005 @11:51PM (#13770911) Homepage Journal
    If speed and capacity are not critical I would definitely recommend the smaller "laptop" enclosures. The 2.5inch drives don't use as much energy (so overheating is less likely). Since they use so little power, they can be USB powered, which keeps the cabling to a minimum. Plus they're sooo much smaller that it's a relative pleasure to move them around.

    The downsides are that GB per GB, the drives are more expensive. They're also slower than desktop hard drives since they have lower bit density and generally lower rotational speeds. And drives are not available in the same capacities. The biggest 2.5 inch drives are about 100GB (i think), versus 500GB for the latest 3.5 inch drives.
  • I have an external firewire drive with a WD 160gb installed in it. It's made for a 5 1/4 bay so it's pretty big. There is one small fan in the back. It died, the drive was overheating so I replaced it. Then it died again. So I got a little creative and now things are going well.

    I went to compusa and got a 3 fan drive bay cooler. I also got hard drive heat sinks that screw on the sides. It was a little tricky finding a way to mount everything so it'd fit in the case, but it's secured to the bottom. B
  • as long as you take care of your disk.
    I have a no brand combo enclosure that works just fine with a 200 GB disk in it. It does heat up mildly, but when that happens I put it vertically so that the hole at the end of the case is upwards, thus creating passive cooling.

    Also, just don't go nuts with your drive and for crying out loud get an external AC for the enclosure, otherwise you'll fry your USB/Firewire ports.

    Mine has been going for over a year and a half and I'm damn happy with it.

    Just find something tha

  • My suggestion, AMS VENUS DS-2316CBK (Score:3, Interesting)

    by noth(a)nk.you ( 881806 ) on Wednesday October 12, 2005 @02:06AM (#13771407)
    After losing a hard drive to a cheap enclosure (heat!) just over a year ago, I spent a little while looking around and found the AMS VENUS DS-2316CBK (the USB/Firewire one).

    A few features I was looking for (and found):

    • Solid construction- a lot of metal with some plastic trim for looks (and it looks good)
    • Low temperature- a built-in fan (which is _whisper_ quiet) blowing on the circuit board of the HDD
    • Good engineering- haven't yet had a problem interfacing with my XPPro laptop (in either USB or Firewire); can run multiples through USB hubs or just daisy-chained with Firewire; movable power connector adjusts to fit your drive

    If you want more info, I found:

    My only complaint, it needs to be pretty exposed (i.e. to open air) to stay _cool_. I recently stuck mine in a cramped spot above a bunch of transformers, so I rigged up a case fan a few inches underneath (12V fan running off 5V to stay quiet) and it's cool to the touch again!
    • I think this is similar to the CoolMax 309 (310s are 5 1/4 and have a 40mm fan). Its more expensive than other enclosures, but they've slipped an 80mm fan under the drive for cooling. Metal case also helps with the head. Overall an Excellent case and well worth it. Some complain about the wall wart power limits, but I prefer the minijack power plug to modified PS2 power plug any day. As an aside, I have a Metal Gear which performs exceptionally well.

      Mod Parent Up!!!!

      Geccie
    • Heh, AMS is having a clearance on various products. A nice deal ($22) is their external 5.25" enclosure with fan and built-in power supply http://www.amsestore.com/Detail.bok?no=722 [amsestore.com], though they don't specify whether or not it supports 128+ gig drives, so it probably doesn't. My personal favorite is the $9 external USB enclosure: http://www.amsestore.com/Detail.bok?no=439 [amsestore.com] . It lacks a fan, but it includes a seemingly reasonable (and removable) USB -> IDE controller with support for big drives. Couple
  • I have a Kingwin USB 2.0 enclosure and it has been working fine since I bought it a year or so ago. It's black aluminum with a blue light power light and an orange activity light. the lights are quite bright, but it keeps the drive cool. I would recommend that you stand the drive up with the provided feet so that it does not heat up your desk, plus it will have more adequate airflow this way. I suggest this only because I have had it for a year and have yet to burn out a drive on it. I currently have a 250g
  • i would go with one of the custom enclosures manufacturers. there are plenty of them there in the market like this one http://www.protocase.com/ [protocase.com]. i have also seen plenty of project going on in http://mini-itx.com/ [mini-itx.com]. i have made some of the custom enclosures. ...
  • I haven't tried any others, so I can't compare, but my Icy Box has given me no trouble at all. It's FireWire (may be USB2 as well); it has no fan, but it has grille sides so that air can flow through. I use it for backups and a bit of off-line storage, so it's not running for more than a few hours at a time, but I haven't noticed any heat problems.

  • Lacie makes a good external hard drive, and it is designed to have the Mac mini sit right on top of it. It is the same size and shape, except it has a couple stands that the mini sits on top of on top of the hdd. It connects via Firewire and goes from 80-200 gigs of information. It is pretty sweet.

    Oh, and Acomdata is one of the worse external hard drive companies around, bar none.
  • I have an USB2.0 to PATA "cable" (probably the interface chip is in the connector), accompanied by a power adaptor that converts line AC to 3.5" HDD molex power.

    No enclosures, so less of a heat problem.

    I got the set for the equiv of USD13 or thereabouts - and that was probably not the best price. Over here the enclosures are overpriced, I refuse to pay 3x to 4x more just to have a cheap case (and a cheap fan if lucky).

    I guess it's not a solution if you mind looking at an exposed 3.5" HDD. But it works well
  • I had a Maxtor Personal Storage 5000DV barbeque. There are loads of horror stories about them, so I decided to roll my own.
    I've now got a USB2.0/Firewire Safecom SUSB2-F35CAF [safecom.cn] enclosure which clamps the drive between two aluminium plates. It runs pretty damn cool and only cost £21. It does have a fan, but it doesn't need it.
    Of course, I couldn't throw the Maxtor's perfectly good USB2/Firewire - IDE bridge away, so I attached a temperature controlled Antec 80mm fan to the enclosure. It's a lot cooler

  • PHR-250CC (Score:3, Interesting)

    by kentborg ( 12732 ) on Wednesday October 12, 2005 @10:31AM (#13773111)
    I bought a PHR-250CC from Newegg (I think it was). I also bought a 2.5" drive that installed rather easily. (You need a very small phillips screw driver and you need to slide it together with the correct edge going into the correct slot.)

    It has both USB 2.0 and 1394 jacks. It comes with a heavy USB cable that will power it off my notebook, but it also comes with a second USB-to-power connector cable for computers that put off less power. It also comes with a heavy 1394 cable that presumably will power it if you have a 6-pin Firewire jack.

    It works great with my Linux machine, I get 27 MB/s on it. I haven't tried the 1394, but at least some of the time this model is marketed under the Macally name, so I bet it works fine with a Macintosh.

    The drive is mostly metal. I don't coddle it, but it seems to stand up well. I'd buy another.

    -kb
  • Step 1 is to get yourself a Seagate Barracuda hard drive. Watch dealmac.com for deals and you can probably pick up 200GB for $50 or so. They're low noise and don't heat up much.

    Then, I got an Argosy USB 2.0 HiSpeed / Firewire 400 enclosure from pcmicrostore.com. The Argosy has an aluminium casing which is only slightly larger than the hard drive; basically, the casing acts like a giant heat sink. The PSU is in an external brick. So, no fan is required.

    I've run the drive overnight in mammoth backup sessions
  • and how portable does it have to be?

    There are a bazillion enclosures out there, I'm sure you've found. I picked up an "old" (but brand new) FW400 tower on ebay for $300. It holds 8 drives on 4 bridges which you can daisy chain. Came with a fan or two, and 6 drives totalling about 1TB have been cranking away for a year and a half now with no failures. It's the size and shape of a tower PC. Not really a cute companion for your mini.

    Alternately, I've got a pair of Sabrent [directron.com] enclosures which I use for backup of
  • You want consensus on an opinion so you turn to Ask Slashdot? Wow...

  • Two ways to go (Score:3, Informative)

    by tedgyz ( 515156 ) * on Wednesday October 12, 2005 @04:12PM (#13776237) Homepage
    2.5" (laptop)
      or
    3.5"

    My first drive I bought is a SmartDisk Firelite [smartdisk.com]. They make USB and FireWire versions. These come with an HD pre-installed.

    I have since bought a 2.5" enclosure - Vantec NexStar [vantecusa.com]. This is a USB2.0 enclosure for 2.5" drives. Very handy for making use of old laptop drives. The best part is that these new ones pull power off the USB line. I can't speak to the FireWire drives.

    I also have some high capacity 3.5" drives in external enclosures. One is a Metal Gear Box [techimo.com]. The other is a Mad Dog [mdmm.com]. The Metal Gear unit is all aluminum with vented sides for maximum cooling. The Mad Dog is not so good for cooling. It is a tight fit and the outer case feels like plastic. Also, the Mad Dog plays havoc with AM radios. I suspect it is because it is a non-metal housing. Well, it says it is anodized aluminum, but it feels more like plastic.

    Generally speaking, you will pay a lot more per GB for a pre-installed hard drive, compared with smart shopping for bargains on enclosures and drives.

    Good luck.
  • Their house brand enclosures have been based on Oxford 911 from day one, and have good build quality. Got one for my sister a year ago and so far no problems. Moreover, their support is great - seems like a decently small outfit committed to actually serving tech-oriented customers. Most of their do-it-yourself stuff has a video download link and print-out instruction on how to do the install right. They also tend to be some of the first to do things like put both USB 2.0 and firewire on an enclosure, or fi
  • On a related note, does anyone have a good source for cheap, naked USB to IDE boards? I don't want an enclosure or power supply, just the board. Google wasn't very useful (most I found cost more than buying an enclosure).

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