The Best Hard Drive Enclosure

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Chris Pirillo »The Best Hard Drive EnclosurePosted 31 minutes ago

eSATA is pointless, what drives transfer at those speeds, seriously. 60mb/s is the norm for a 7200 drive in my experience, usb is more than capable.

my drive is 3 times faster in eSata than in usb

Yeah he just wants a uber huge Jump Drive.

USB doesnt transfer at 60mb/s, its closer to 48 (at the top end) and averages around 20 or so. eSATA is the same speed as the internal connection to your drive, it’s exactly the same port just on the back of your tower so you can just plug in any SATA drive without having to open the case and screw it in and so on.

USB is just more common because it’s supported by Microsoft, and Apple made FireWire so they try to downplay it. It also helps that MS own the majority share of the desktop market lol. But yes FireWire is far superior to USB!

Also, far far more drives come in higher speeds now. 10,000 rpm drives are becoming far more common. The interface (SATA/PATA whatever) wasn’t the bottleneck, it was the physical drive, the motor. You’ll start to see the limitations of the IDE cabling on drives that fast, also SATA is more power efficient and the cables are much smaller.

;o awesome

That’s exactly what I was looking for ! thx for the review Chris.

Looks like the Apple Time Machine.

wow looks sweet. BTW I checked the chat out didn’t care for it much. Way to many people in there. Hard to get a word in. but eh that is just me.

Nice find! i’ll definitely look into getting one! Thanks Chris!

usb 2.0 and the current not the new verion of firewire are almost identical, relativly no noticeable difference in speed at all. At leastr no consumer would ever truly be able to tell the difference between the two. Most computer manufacturtes still dont full support it on all their systems. E-SATA is where its at. Only an idiot would jump on the Firewire USB drama all over again. Thats like agp 4x vs agp 8x vs pciX 1.0 not even comparaeable the winner is the winner.

I was checking out the manufacturer’s website and it says you can plug peripherals like printers and what not into the external.

Have you tried that?

Thanks a lot for sharing this with everyone Chris!

This really helps me out because I run a small webhosting site, where customers purchase website and domains, and it is gradually increasing in customers, so therefore more space needs to backed up just incase of a severe server crash or someone hacks into a customers account, I can have a backup from the day before!

I currently back up the information onto another server, but I like to make sure I have the information at home, just incase the other server is down, or anything else would happen, I can easily and I will KNOW that I have the information!

I will also use this for other website projects I work on, so incase of a computer crash or hard drive failure, I will always know I have it.

And of course, it is always good to know that you actually have the information saved in another place so you don’t have to keep worrying!

Thanks for the video Chris!
Take care!

i am looking for one and i think u could use those as external hard drives cause i have an extra hard drive in a box and i want to make it as a extrnal is that possible??

I think that this is an awesome product! After reviewing the product details this looks like it would work for almost anyone on any platform! Like the comment you made in the video–it would look awesome with a mac mini! Thanks for sharing Chris–i will have to order this!!

Matt

i thought sata was pronouced with a long “a” sound.

so did i…

higher RPMs just speed up the seek time of the drive, if ya really want a fast drive, get 2 identical hard drives and set them up in a
raid 0 config,i get transfer rates from 500-1100MB/s depending on what type of read/write operation going on.

I wish I had watch this video, before I brought my last enclosure and I wouldn’t have wasted my money. I brought a Mad dog hard drive usb enclosure and I can’t use it, the hard drive gets way too hot. Like I said before I wish I had seen this video earlier. Excellent, video

I also wish I’d read this first. I had a 80 gig hard drive that went to hell after having it inside a generic company enclosure. Now to just get myself some firewire ports for my comp to take advantage of firewire enclosures for my next system.

I had no idea you could insert an internal hard drive into a casing that allows it to be external… good to know!

Thank you for the advice, I’m shopping around for an enclosure and this vid was very useful!

I did a review of an alternative from icybox if you want something you want to quickly swap between hdd’s you might have stacked on your desk.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdYLn2ogIWs

i thought it was like “s” – “ar” – “ta” just without the r so its like “a house”.

For £7 on ebay I got an adaptor that is SATA/IDE/EIDE to USB. Cheap external hard drive! Windows recognises it as an extra drive. Power is via a separate adaptor. You can unplug and plug in in any order you want (apart from plug in power then data) without damage. The only obvious drawback is it doesn’t enclose or cool the drive. Another plus is that it works with any SATA/IDE/EIDE device, i.e. hard drives and optical drives! I believe you can get firewire versions.

for normal user u dont need this….eSATA and a fan and thats all u need

OWC/macsales sells elite AL external thst is great,,it has FW400, 800, usb 2.0, esats. it has it all..not expensive, cheaper than the stack and smaller

is there any TRANSPARENT eSata hdd enclosure out there??!

I like it but there’s one critical design flaw.

It doesn’t glow.

Firewire is FAIL

This is for 3.5″ drives only, right? Or, can you put a 2.5″ laptop drive in it?

Thanks!

what speed is it? 7200 rpm?

Barbara, if the 2.5″ hard drive is IDE you would have to find a small converter that would fit inside, but it would probably be too much hassle. 3.5″ Hard drives are wider connections than the laptop drives.

If you have a 2.5″ Sata HDD, then you could put it in there since the connections are the same, but you’d have to secure it down from all that extra room to jiggle around in.

no bcz clear plastic does not do a good job with the heat. thats why aluminum is best. (or copper, but u wont find any of those)

Actually there is one socket missing..an Ethernet port. A friend of mine bought a cheap enclosure that had one of those on the back…handy or what?

agree

the case is normaly called a housing

Hi Chris (and anyone else)

Now that you’ve had it for about 7 months, I was wondering if you would still recommend the “miniStack v.3.”

I am in the market for one and am concerned about all the reports I read of enclosures without fans burning out within a few months.

If yours has survived with moderate use, I’d be more likely to buy one.

[...] • Found on Windows Live, Yahoo! Search The Best Hard Drive Enclosure ~ Chris Pirillo Dec 31, 2007 … I wish I had watch this video, before I brought my last enclosure and I wouldn’t [...]

Late 2 The Game:

Although this post is late to the game. I thought it worthy to mention that the hard drive manufacturer Lacie has put out a drive similar to what you were hoping to find for many years. I do not believe it would have solved your extra sata problem, but since they have been putting these bad boys out for so long maybe you wouldn’t have bought them in the first place. It is an excellent drive and I own several of them and have had a great experience with them.

info on the drive is below:

LaCie Big Disk Extreme+ Triple
FireWire 400 & 800 | Hi-Speed USB 2.0
1TB

Triple interface for universal connectivity on PC/Mac
Built-in RAID 0 for Extreme FireWire 800 speed
Compact, metal design: stack, rackmount, stand upright
LaCie Shortcut Button: launch any application in 1 push