Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with drive and enclosure

Quiet hard drive enclosures

Blazecock Pileon — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 19:38:04 -0800

Any recommendations for quiet eSATA two- or four-hard drive enclosure that supports RAID 0/1? Looking to replace a noisy enclosure (cannot replace hardwired fans) with a new box that is near-dead quiet, with eSATA, that quietly supports two or four 2 TB drives in a quiet, mirrored or striped arrangement. If such a thing exists, I would welcome your advice. Thank you.

Does it make any difference what kind of hard drive I buy to put in an external USB 2.0 enclosure in terms of transfer speed?

GuyZero — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 19:57:20 -0800

Does it make any difference what kind of hard drive I buy to put in an external USB 2.0 enclosure in terms of transfer speed? So I have an empty external USB enclosure. Given that USB 2 has a low data rate relative to SATA does it make any difference if I buy a low-power slower drive (e.g. 5400 RPM) vs a higher-performance drive (e.g. 7200 RPM)? I'm fine spending more to get a faster drive but I'm unsure how much of a bottleneck USB 2 is in practice and whether all drives will perform mostly the same once in an USB enclosure.

external usb drive suddenly slow. recovery approaches?

the mad poster! — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 05:56:42 -0800

my external hard drive is suddenly really slow. I'm pretty anxious. What now? The external usb enclosure/disk (off which I play iTunes) suddenly started hiccuping on song changes. So I opened it in explorer and it was loading the root directory structure painfully slowly. So I disconnected it, reconnected it, and I can see the directory structure and can open files but it takes forever (I just tried one image file in a subdirectory)

So I did 'safely remove hardware' and disconnected it from the computer. What now?

I imagine I want to do something like

a) copy whatever I can, I guess I should buy another external disk cause my laptop hd is too small
b) check for errors

Right? Any programs or approaches or sequence I should use? I'm using Windows 7

Which PSU is the right one for my external hard drive caddy?

Hartham's Hugging Robots — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 09:33:14 -0800

Which PSU is the right one for my external hard drive caddy? So, a year or so ago I bought an external hard drive enclosure, in order to be able to hook up the HDD that was in my old PC to my shiny new Mac Book Pro. That all worked fine at the time.

A year flies past, I need to look for something on that old HDD in the caddy, and dufus here had stuck it - complete with disconnected external power supply - into a box that had lots of other power supplies in it. Now I'm not sure which one to use; I don't want to fry the HDD, and if I can avoid simply chucking this caddy in the bin and buying another, that'd be great. The first thing I did was go to the manufacturer's site; what I bought was one of these. But the PSU specs aren't in the information there, and (classy) the downloads don't work. And there's no way to contact the manufacturers I can see.

The HDD inside the caddy says 'RATED: 5V 500mA. 12V 700mA'. I've got several power supplies knocking round here which would fit (pin > socket wise), but none of them appear to say exactly that. (One says 'Output 12V' (then a squiggly line symbol I don't recognise) then 600mA). As you can tell I'm no expert at this :(

Is there a... standard for HDD's in caddies? Could I attach the one described above? Thanks for any help.

Dual-Bay SATA Enclosures

sdis — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 15:05:09 -0800

Dual-bay SATA Enclosures! Which ones let me copy from one drive to the other on a Mac? I have my eye out on this inexpensive one, and in the end, I want a box into which I can stuff two harddrives, copy stuff between them, and copy stuff between my internal laptop harddrive and them. Bonus points if I can hook it up via USB to my Airport Extreme and get two network drives.

Will this EagleTech one do what I need? If not, what will?

(Having trouble finding detailed info on this enclosure, although from various reviews, it appears that it supports RAID 0 as well as "normal", though I'm not clear what "normal" would be in this circumstance)

Are there any hard drive enclosures for 3.5" form HDs that can be powered off a USB port alone?

chefscotticus — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 22:30:29 -0800

Are there any hard drive enclosures for 3.5" form HDs that can be powered off a USB port alone? (ie, without additional AC plug) I'm looking for a HD enclosure to use with a Western Digital 1.5 TB Caviar Green SATA Hard Drive (WD15EADS) that wouldn't require me to plug an AC adapter into the wall. WD claims this drive uses 40% less power -- not sure if that matters.

It will be primarily connected to a MacBook (5.1) that has 2 USB 2.0 ports, but no FireWire.

Cloning a laptop hard drive

nomad73 — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 07:40:39 -0800

Replacing my laptop's hard drive. I think I've almost got it but have some questions about the cloning process. I'm replacing the 60GB EIDE main hard drive (C: drive) of my 4 year old laptop with Win XP Home. I've got a new 160GB EIDE drive, a 2.5" hard drive enclosure, and was planning on using XXCLONE to get the job done. All has gone well so far - I've connected the new drive to the laptop via the USB enclosure, and formatted it. Here are my questions:

1) When I formatted the new drive (using the Windows disk management tool) it asked me to pick a drive letter. I picked a random letter down the alphabet - H: - so as not to get confused with the other two external USB drives I've got running. If the idea is to make a clone of my C: drive and then take it out of my laptop and install my new drive, will the drive letter matter? Will the OS simply see the new drive as the C: drive even though I named it H: when I formatted it? If not, how do I go about naming the new drive C: while I've still got to clone the actual C: drive?

2) XXCLONE has the option, when cloning, to make the new drive bootable - which is what I would like to do, I assume. It copies the master boot record and all that. Does that mean that no matter the drive letter I assign to the new drive, when i pop it into my laptop, it will just boot from the new drive and everything will be fine?

3) Other cloning programs seem to either create a bootable CD that you then run while the C: drive is cloned. XXCLONE does not do this - it operates in XP. Will that present any problems in terms of not copying EVERY exact OS file? I'd rather not spend the $ on Norton Ghost or the full version of Acronis True Image, hence why I'm using XXCLONE - free.

Thank you for any advice you may have. Much appreciated.

Save my data before the disk asplode

djgh — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 13:21:04 -0800

My external hard-drive's on the fritz. What can I do to make sure I get all my data off it before it goes? I've got a 250GB hard drive which I put in an enclosure (cheap CompUSA one). It's got a red light and a green light. Recently, the red light will come on after a little bit and stay on (so not the blinking "transferring data" signal).

After the light comes on, the USB connection freaks out - if it's connected, it freezes, if it's not connected and I plug it in, it refuses to connect. (Disk Utility will show the drive, but not the partition. The partition refuses to mount, and the icon doesn't show up on the desktop).

What steps should I take to make sure I don't lose everything (it's my main music'n'movies drive...)?

I'm assuming that at some point it will be beneficial to pop the drive out and test in another enclosure, but assuming that doesn't work (worst case scenario and all), what should I do? i.e., the disk itself is suffering issues (plus, it's probably very good to have a backup anyway...).

I'm on OSX Tiger, if it helps, and have access to another 40GB or so (another external drive). The drive is currently sat disconnected on my shelf, not even powered.

How can I troubleshoot an external drive that won't mount?

sparrows — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 18:36:44 -0800

External firewire drive was working fine with Mac laptop, now won't mount. I hear it make its usual startup noises and then I feel it spinning happily, but the OS can't see it. I've tried lots of troubleshooting steps (list inside); can you think of others I should try? I'm running Mac OS 10.4.10 on a MacBook Pro. This is a 2.5" drive inside a MacAlly firewire enclosure. This setup has worked perfectly for a year.

- Drive and enclosure were both bought new a year ago and have led an easy life (pretty low usage, no physical impact/trauma).
- No magnets near the drive.
- No other hardware issues with the laptop (ever).
- No power events, I assume -- there hasn't been a storm, my building's power is modern, the laptop is plugged into a surge protector (enclosure draws its power from the firewire port).
- No changes to the OS or to any software in between when it mounted and didn't.
- Drive is spinning silently, no clicks or other noises. Vibration of spinning feels the same to me as always.
- Indicator LED on enclosure is lit up as usual when drive is powered on.

I've tried, with no success:
- restarting Mac (several times).
- connecting drive with its on/off switch already turned to on (usually I'd connect it with the switch off, then turn switch to on).
- relaunching Finder while drive is connected & spinning.
- opening Disk Utility, in case OS is seeing drive and just not displaying it in the Finder (no luck -- only drive displayed in Disk Utility is my internal HD).
- trying to mount it connected by USB rather than Firewire (enclosure has both full-size fw and mini usb connections). This might not be a useful test since I've never tried mounting it by USB in the past, so I don't know if it can draw enough power from the USB port (and I can't find the little AC cable it came with for situations when it can't draw enough).

I don't have another 2.5" enclosure on hand, I don't have any other device that connects via Firewire, and it will be a week until I have access to another person's Mac to test it that way.

Please let me know any more troubleshooting I can do with just my own laptop, the drive & enclosure, and Firewire & USB cables. Thank you!

enclosure for 2.5in and 3.5in drives?

advil — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 14:42:54 -0800

Is there such a thing as a hard drive enclosure that supports both SATA 2.5in and 3.5in drives? I need to try to do some one-off data recovery on a 2.5in SATA drive. However, it seems like a 3.5in enclosure is more generally useful, and I have a 3.5in drive I accidentally bought that is much larger than my current hard drives (future-shock inducing even), and I have to decide whether to return it or get an enclosure for it. Preferably this would be something at least as cheap as just buying two enclosures (I've seen some complicated and expensive multi-drive enclosures but that's not really what I'm looking for).

So ideally I'd like a single device that I can use for my one-off data recovery and then use as an actual enclosure for 3.5in drives. My feeble searches are not turning up anything.

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

chunking express — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 13:43:34 -0800

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.)

Are All Drive Enclosures Basically The Same?

optimuscrime — Sun, 30 Jul 2006 13:31:57 -0800

Hello, Hive Mind. I'm about to buy a Mac Mini for my space-cramped office. However, I want to be able to use my two old IDE drives. So, what kind of enclosure should I buy? Are they all essentially the same? Should I go for USB or Firewire?

Computer won't recognize external drive

gfrobe — Sat, 21 Jan 2006 09:51:40 -0800

A little help please in getting my computer to fully recognize an external hard drive. I recently pulled a drive out of an old computer and purchased an external USB enclosure to use it with my new one (running XP). In the old computer, the drive was a second hard drive for personal files and was set as slave. The manual for the enclosure says to set the drive to master, which I did. When I plug it in, the drive is detected and shows up in Device Manager; however it doesn't show up in My Computer or Disk Management. Removing it using the little green arrow in the system tray also doesn't work as I get the hour glass and then have to re-boot. Attempting to uninstall the drive in Device Manager also causes a freeze.

I've tried setting the jumper to slave and that didn't work. Also tried hooking the enclosure up to a new computer and got the same result. Lastly, to make the drive was still OK, I installed it back in the old computer internally as a slave and it worked perfectly fine.

Should I assume the enclosure is defective and send it back or am I doing something wrong?

Making Firewire devices work with WinXP

weston — Mon, 12 Dec 2005 19:42:00 -0800

Firewire and Windows XP: I bought an external Firewire Drive on Ebay. When I plug it into a PC, it's not recognized, and the driver search does not go well. Similarly, if I start up my Powerbook G4 as a Firewire device, and hook it to my PC, Windows is again puzzled. What can I do to help Win XP succesfully work with these devices? Or should I send back the drive and pick my Firewire devices more carefully? Here's the auction I bought the drive from. It's utterly generic, displaying absolutely no branding on both packaging and the device itself. It does work just fine when I plug it into my Powerbook. But when I plug it into the PC, it merely recognizes that it's new hardware and we start the driver search dance. It fails at locating things automatically, so I tried the CD that came with it (also branding-free) that contains:

• a folder called "mac"
• 2507RM.exe (apparently an uninstaller for a Win 98 USB-to-IDE Driver)
• 2507RM_silent.exe (which, true to its name, gives no sign of doing anything)
• PL2507S.inf
• PL2507U.INF
• Setup.exe (which starts an installshield process that quits, informing you it only works under Windows 98)

None of these files appear to be helpful. Windows does tell me that it's a "Prolific 3507 Combo Device (1394 ATAPI_Rev 1.00)" when I plug it in, and so I went to Prolific's site in hopes of finding the latest and greatest. Unfortunately, this seems to be all that's available. Notice it's all Win98 and ME stuff, which isn't helpful. I've also contacted the support email address listed in the auction last Friday morning, but have thus far gotten no response.

As for the Powerbook, it's a G4 667 DVI. I poked around to see if there were specific drivers for using Macs as Firewire devices, but can't seem to find anything. This isn't too important -- I mostly tried connecting it because it's the only other Firewire device I have handy to test with. But I'd like to know if this is theoretically possible.

The PC is a Sony VIAO Desktop running WinXP Pro SP 2. The Firewire Bus host controller says it's a "NEC OHCI Compliant IEEE 1394 Host Controller."

I'd really like to be able to (a) fix the problem and have all these devices get along, but failing that, I'd be happy to hear (b) advice on how to deal with the seller and eBay, because this may be my first returned item ever and (c) recommendations for External Firewire enclosures/drives that play well with both PCs and Macs.

How robust/durable are LaCie firewire drives?

psmealey — Mon, 07 Feb 2005 12:07:16 -0800

How robust/durable are LaCie firewire drives? [+] Wow... Don't know how that happened... sorry for the duplicate.

At any rate, I have been using a G5 Mac with 75GB hard disk and I have exceeded my storage capacity. I have a 50GB MP3 library, and have similar space requirements for my LogicAudio project files. I did buy a LaCIE 500GB drive, but I am curious how durable these are for (1) using it as my prinicple iTunes library (I tend to play Mp3s as I work all day and (2) using it for recording to with Logic or Protools?

Thanks for your help.