External 3.5" IDE HD enclosure
Community Forums/General Help/External 3.5" IDE HD enclosure
| ||
| I currently have an Icybox one. If you go to the Icybox website, suffice to say that their hard drive enclosures are about as trustworthy as their grasp of the English language. The USB and power connections in the back of the enclosure are a really poor fit, and either cable can just fall out of its socket if I attempt to move it. Further, the thing randomly disconnects itself from the PC (nothing to do with the cable issues - googling reveals its a common problem). It does this on every PC I've ever used it on, and given that it has about 50GB of data on it including all my Blitz code going back nine years, its only a matter of time before something nasty happens. So, what are the alternatives? Any reliable enclosures? Maybe NAS? I don't want to spend a lot, but I don't want to compromise reliability either. |
| ||
| Don't know about good ones, but avoid the Akasa Integral enclosures -- both mine and my brother's died early. If you have a spare PC, even an old slow one, just stick a decent hard drive in it (Aria have a 1TB Samsung drive for £45 in their SuperSpecials section), add a £5 Gigabit LAN card in each machine and turn it into a file server. You just install Windows or Linux as normal and share the drive(s), put VNC on it and then put it out of the way with no monitor/keyboard/mouse once it's set up. Works a treat for me. |
| ||
| How much do you have to spend? I just bought a 320gig IOmega USB drive for fifty quid. A NAS will cost you considerably more. |
| ||
| How much do you have to spend? Nothing til after Christmas.I already have a 200GB drive... just need a box to put it in. |
| ||
| I've seen them recently then with digital video outputs for about $100 on sale, so you can plug them straight into your TV and watch stuff you downloaded off the net without having to have a puter. I bought two enclosures and haven't had a problem with either. Don't even know what brands they are. I prefer the notebook style ones, despite being slower they don't require a power supply and are plenty fast enough for USB2 |
| ||
| Just something to keep in mind: If you're getting an enclosure, consider looking for one with dual connectors, both USB and eSATA : With USB you're limited to ~40MB/sec, while the drive itself can easily be capable of twice that speed (a good modern drive can pull ~100MB/sec) Connecting it by eSATA will allow you to access the drive at full speed. Even if your current PC doesn't have eSATA, there's a decent chance that your next one will, after all, and the prices for both kind of enclosures ( USB only vs. dual connector) are almost the same. |
| ||
| I prefer the notebook style ones, despite being slower they don't require a power supply and are plenty fast enough for USB2 Oh don't even get me started on that!I thought the same as you, so I bought an enclosure for the 2.5" HD out of my old laptop. Everything's great, provided I don't want to copy anything to/from the drive, in which case the USB port didn't provide enough power and it disconnected itself. Had to buy a powered USB hub for it which solved the problem but then I've got wires all over the place. |
| ||
| Lacie are alright. I have a few of them and the one i use when working support gets really "abused". http://www.lacie.com/uk/index.htm |
| ||
| GFK, maybe your mobo was the problem where the 2.5" was concerned. Thanks for pointing out the eSATA xlsior, I never heard of it before till you just brought it up. Definately something to think about :) |
| ||
| GFK, maybe your mobo was the problem where the 2.5" was concerned. Possibly, but it's always a crapshoot - I've come across quite a few PC's over the years that had difficulties providing enough power over USB to run those 2.5" laptop drive enclosures. You can never *count* on it working, which is kind of bad. (Plus the drive dropping out at random points can really wreck havoc on your data that you're writing to the disk to. If your data storage isn't reliable, then why bother writing the files in the first place? |
| ||
| If your data storage isn't reliable, then why bother writing the files in the first place? ....hence this thread. ;) |
| ||
| My USB drive actually plugs into 2 USB sockets to ensure it can draw enough power. Bit of a pain as it didn't say anything about it on the box but it's no big deal, really. |
| ||
| Mine too, but it still didn't play nice. |
| ||
| big10p: Most/all of the 2.5" enclosures use two USB plugs, but even then I've often seen it fail |
| ||
| Really? A consultant I was working with had a 120GB drive that only used one USB socket. |
| ||
| Samsung. 'nuff said. |
| ||
| If you have a spare PC, even an old slow one, just stick a decent hard drive in it (Aria have a 1TB Samsung drive for £45 in their SuperSpecials section), add a £5 Gigabit LAN card in each machine and turn it into a file server. What's power consumption like? I'm not sure I'd fancy having a PC running 24/7 due to the cost. You just install Windows or Linux as normal and share the drive(s), put VNC on it and then put it out of the way with no monitor/keyboard/mouse once it's set up. Works a treat for me. |
| ||
| It depends on the motherboard and power supply really. Look up Atom-based Mini-ITX motherboards, many of which use around 30W, such as the first one on the page below -- they're around £60, but this includes the low-power processor on the board, LAN port, etc: http://www.mini-itx.com/store/?c=47 Do you really need it running 24/7 though? I found just powering it on while doing something else wasn't any hassle, and you can shut it down remotely via VNC/Windows Remote Desktop. I don't have it set up at the moment as I'm planning to sell/move, but mine used about 80W with a monitor attached, and I intend to replace the motherboard with one of the Atom boards in time... |
| ||
| I can see how that'd work, but I'm not sure it'd be convenient for what I want to do as I'm losing the portability aspect of it, which was kinda the point of having an external HD in the first place. The other downside is that my LAN is wireless and all my hardware is 54mbps, so transferring lots of data (as I'm doing right now - Magicville backup 1.8GB) would take hours. |
   |