External drive enclosure

  • Thread starter Thread starter Derek Baker
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Derek Baker

Planning to move my backup drive from inside to outside my machine. Most
etailers here stock Akasa and IcyBox. These okay? Are there other brands
I should be looking at?

Thanks
 
Derek Baker said:
Planning to move my backup drive from inside to outside my machine.
Click to expand...

You do realise that externals are much less reliable than internals dont you ?
Most etailers here stock Akasa and IcyBox. These okay? Are there other brands
I should be looking at?
Click to expand...

Dunno.
 
Derek Baker said:
Planning to move my backup drive from inside to outside my
machine. Most etailers here stock Akasa and IcyBox. These
okay? Are there other brands I should be looking at?
Click to expand...


I notice that Kingwin seems to be represented by .uk
e-tailers as well. Most of the complaints that I've read
in the newsgroups seem to involve the USB external
hard drives that rely on convection for their cooling,
notably the Maxtor One-Touch. The enclosures that
include a fan for airflow through the interior and around
the hard drive may provide a more normal lifetime. The
speed will be limited to that of your USB, though. Have
you given consideration to what's variously called a
"mobile rack" or "hard drive caddy"?

*TimDaniels*
 
Derek Baker said:
Planning to move my backup drive from inside to outside my machine. Most
etailers here stock Akasa and IcyBox. These okay? Are there other brands
I should be looking at?

Thanks
Click to expand...


Well, for about $150 US, you can get the Seagate Passport 80GB, which
consistently gets good reviews, and has a nice warranty should you need it.
All the above argue in favor of NOT building your own extenal. Don't know if
it's available in the UK, though.
 
Timothy said:
I notice that Kingwin seems to be represented by .uk
e-tailers as well. Most of the complaints that I've read
in the newsgroups seem to involve the USB external
hard drives that rely on convection for their cooling,
notably the Maxtor One-Touch. The enclosures that
include a fan for airflow through the interior and around
the hard drive may provide a more normal lifetime. The
speed will be limited to that of your USB, though. Have
you given consideration to what's variously called a
"mobile rack" or "hard drive caddy"?
Click to expand...

The trouble with these external enclosures with "cooling" fans is that
the "cooling" fans
are so undernourished that you cannot feel the airflow with your hands;
you need to put your
face up against the fan to feel what is optimistically termed "airflow."

The 40mm fans so prevalent in "actively cooled" enclosures is so
pathetic so as to be
completely useless.

To the OP - try span.com in the UK. They'll have something with a
decent 80mm fan.
But be prepared to pay £65 rather than £25 for the enclosure - it's
worth it.

Of all the external, passively "cooled" housings, the IcyBox is one of
the best; it
has mesh side panels. However, there were issues with the USB chipset
(mainly preventing
daisy-chain linking of other devices to the enclosure - nothing
dramatic) but I would be
inclined to spend a little more and get something decent.

You might also want to consider an external RAID 1 array; Span sell them
with eSATA
connectors and have all the interfaces, cables, etc. Very nice kit.


Odie
 
Odie said:
The trouble with these external enclosures with "cooling" fans is that
the "cooling" fans
are so undernourished that you cannot feel the airflow with your hands;
you need to put your
face up against the fan to feel what is optimistically termed "airflow."

The 40mm fans so prevalent in "actively cooled" enclosures is so
pathetic so as to be
completely useless.

To the OP - try span.com in the UK. They'll have something with a
decent 80mm fan.
But be prepared to pay £65 rather than £25 for the enclosure - it's
worth it.

Of all the external, passively "cooled" housings, the IcyBox is one of
the best; it
has mesh side panels. However, there were issues with the USB chipset
(mainly preventing
daisy-chain linking of other devices to the enclosure - nothing
dramatic) but I would be
inclined to spend a little more and get something decent.

You might also want to consider an external RAID 1 array; Span sell them
with eSATA
connectors and have all the interfaces, cables, etc. Very nice kit.


Odie
Click to expand...

Thanks for the reply. Been to www.span.com, but can't see where it gives
the fan size
 
Dale Brisket said:
Well, for about $150 US, you can get the Seagate Passport 80GB,
which consistently gets good reviews, and has a nice warranty
should you need it. All the above argue in favor of NOT building
your own extenal. Don't know if it's available in the UK, though.
Click to expand...


Lots of websites in the .uk domain list Passports, but they're
made by Western Digital:
http://westerndigital.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=110

*TimDaniels*
 
Dale said:
Well, for about $150 US, you can get the Seagate Passport 80GB, which
consistently gets good reviews, and has a nice warranty should you need it.
All the above argue in favor of NOT building your own extenal. Don't know if
it's available in the UK, though.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the reply. I've got 200GB at the moment. Bought about six
months ago so don't really want to replace it.
 
Derek Baker said:
I've got 200GB at the moment. Bought about six
months ago so don't really want to replace it.
Click to expand...


Have you considered a "mobile rack" for it? You
can remove the hard drive without opening the case,
and you can insert trays containing other hard drives.
It's like inserting and removing CDs, only they're
entire hard drives, and you don't have to go with the
lower speed of USB. Here're some models made
by Kingwin:

Parallel ATA:
http://kingwin.com/pdut_Cat.asp?CateID=25
I use this model with the fan in the bottom of the tray,
and it works very well to keep the HD cool:
http://kingwin.com/pdut_detail.asp?LineID=&CateID=25&ID=136

Serial ATA:
http://kingwin.com/pdut_Cat.asp?CateID=47

Extra trays cost about half the price of the rack/tray
pair, and you can keep other drives in their own
trays to slide into the same rack.

*TimDaniels*
 
Yep, my bad. Still worth considering.
Click to expand...

The warranty isnt anything special. I'd rather use a drive
with a 3 or 5 year warranty in an enclosure not from the
drive manufacturer where you only get a 1 year warranty.
 
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