Are there any particularly awesome external firewire hard drive enclosures that I should be aware about?

October 29, 2007 1:43 PM

Are there any particularly awesome external firewire hard drive enclosures that I should be aware about?

I want to put a Western Digital 500 GB SATA drive in one. I'm interested in enclosures people have actually used. (I can find reviews online myself.)

posted by chunking express to computers & internet (7 comments total)

OK.

Well, are there any external enclosures I should avoid like the plague?
posted by chunking express at 5:57 PM on October 29, 2007

I use a Vantec Nexstar 3 (though USB 2.0 and PATA) and have had no problems whatsoever. And it seems to have just as good of reviews for their Firewire and/or SATA models. (I read through a hell of a lot of reviews before deciding on that brand/model).
posted by astrochimp at 5:59 PM on October 29, 2007

There is some discussion about external hard drive enclosures in the comments of this post. Though it's not the most up to date discussion on the subject.
posted by nihraguk at 6:26 PM on October 29, 2007

The problem with all-in-one boxes (ie, with multiple drive bays) is that the weakest link is the fan, followed by the PSU. A single failure in a 50-cent fan can bring your whole array down. There are ways around this - get an enclosure with standard, easily replaceable components, or split your array into several distinct, separate enclosures so that a single cheap component failure (and believe me, they will fail) will not bring down your entire storage unit. To avoid fan issues, you can get single, fanless enclosures. You still have the problem with the PSUs which are generally not built to anything like the same levels as a CPU box PSU. It's tragic, but you can spend $500 on a fancy NAS enclosure and it's using the same crappy no-name PSU as a $30 enclosure. Serious enclosures have multiple, redundant PSUs.
posted by meehawl at 6:49 PM on October 29, 2007

Yeah, I'm just looking for a single drive enclosure. If I think when I get another hard drive i'll throw the enclosures away and put everything in a computer. I agree that these all-in-one NAS solutions seem like over priced Linux boxes.

The Vantec Nexstar 3 certainly sounds good. I've also read positive reviews.
posted by chunking express at 7:06 PM on October 29, 2007

I ended up getting a Vantec Nextstar 3 eSata + USB 2.0 enclosure. I wanted Firewire but they don't sell a SATA + Firewire enclosure, which was kind of strange. I actually found it difficult to find anyone that sold SATA + Firewire enclosures for a reasonable price. (Even this enclosure was half the price of the drive I put in it!) So far so good.
posted by chunking express at 7:16 AM on October 31, 2007

The WiebeTech enclosures have a very good reputation, and I've been happy with mine (particularly the TrayDock).
posted by klausness at 3:38 PM on November 6, 2007