hard drive enclosures

[ricwawee]

I'm sure this has been discussed to death, but what is the bottom line
on hard drive enclosures. Are they hard on the HDs. Do they cause HD
failure. I have recently had a HD fail in one of those but I have had
internal HDs fail over the years as well. Are there certain enclosures
that are better than others. Thanks.

 

[Rod Speed]

I'm sure this has been discussed to death,

It has.

but what is the bottom line on hard drive enclosures.

That very few of the cool the hard drive adequately.

Are they hard on the HDs.

Yes, both because very few cool the hard drive adequately, and
they are much more prone to shock, either getting knocked off
the table or with the vertical ones, falling over etc.

Do they cause HD failure.

Yes, and that is the reason that the packaged ones
only have 1 year warrantys where the drives themselves
when bought separately have 3-5 year warrantys.

I have recently had a HD fail in one of those but I
have had internal HDs fail over the years as well.
Are there certain enclosures that are better than others.

Yes, particularly the ones with decent fan cooling for the
drive and those that minimise the risk of shock to the drive.

The ones which use laptop drives are better for both
reasons, but they are much more expensive $/GB.

 

[Arno Wagner]

I'm sure this has been discussed to death, but what is the bottom line
on hard drive enclosures. Are they hard on the HDs. Do they cause HD
failure. I have recently had a HD fail in one of those but I have had
internal HDs fail over the years as well. Are there certain enclosures
that are better than others. Thanks.

I just posted a discussion of a specific combinationm of drive and
enclosure. Bottom line: Good enclosures without fans are only
suitable for lower-power HDDs. Many still take too much power
to run at tolerable temperatures without airflow.

For 2.5" this does not apply, since they have far lower power needs.

Arno