eSATA Enclosure ?

S

SoManyBits

n00b
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Aug 20, 2016
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6
Can anyone offer any comments on either:

OWC Mercury Elite Pro OWCME3QHKIT0GB
JMicron JMB355 (eSATA/Firewire)
JMicron JMS562 (USB)

or

Icydock ICYBento MB559U3S-1S
Controller Unknown

I am trying to choose an eSATA and USB 3.0 External Storage Enclosure.

TIA
 
If your putting a hot spinner drive in it, get what ever is cooler. I have only used external once for myself and mine died from heat lol! if for an ssd 3.1 might be nice.
 
A 3.1 means USB3. You need the B version for higher speeds but also the USB-C ports to use those speeds. My motherboard says its USB 3.1.. Which was the old USB3 speeds. It is still faster than the old USB3 even in USB2 modes. As an example, USB2 max rates are low 30's and getting 35mb/s means outstanding, new USB3.1 can reach mid 40's, hitting theoretical limits. So while max speeds remain same, realistic speeds you get are higher due to design and implementation. Always try getting a case with a fan in it. I rarely seen this though. I have got a few cases with the fan vents and connectors but no fan. Never understand this.
 
AlienTech said:
new USB3.1 can reach mid 40's
Click to expand...
Typo?

My regular USB 3.0 ports on my older mobos max out at 351MBps using external m.2 SSD. While the 3.1 ports on my newer mobos allow full saturation of the SSD at 546MBps.

To OP, I second the above and recommend something with a fan if you are putting a HDD in it.
 
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Hi Everybody,

I prefer fans too, but I cannot find an eSATA + USB 3.x enclosure that has any.
The IcyDock Blizzard has them, but it has been discontinued.
Both of the enclosures listed above are convection.
Interestingly, one website did a comparison of IcyDock Blizzard and IcyDock Bento and found that the fans in the Blizzard only made a 2 degree Celsius difference in operating temperature of the drive inside.
Very suprising to me.

If anyone knows of a eSATA and USB 3.x with a fan, please post.

Thanks.
 
If you can't find one, you could choose one or the other, do you really need both connections?

Check out Vantec, Istarusa, **********, Icydock.

Also, regarding the review of the fan vs no fan. Even a hard drive sitting freeair on a desk with a low speed fan pointed at it drops more than 5-10C on an idle drive and even as much as more than a 20-30C drop on an active drive depending on the drive. It's possible in that review that the drive was spinned down or some other reason.
 
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you have to give us more details.......what drive is going in it? Or you need one new with drive in it? What drive do you need? In other words the the hell is it going to be used for? Is there some reason your not putting it into an existing pc?
 
I am planning on putting a Seagate ST2000NM0055 into the enclosure. I have had good service from Seagate's server quality drives over the years. No failures ever. I usually outgrow the space or speed. I actually still have a SCSI-3 drive from them that still works, albeit rather slowly running windows xp. :)

I always keep a drive in a box for emergencies, though honestly it is far more likely that my eSATA drive in a box attached to my DVR (eSATA connection) will fail than one of my pc drives. So right now I will probably be using it for creating and storing backups with Acronis Backup (eSATA connection).

I am not expecting heavy disk loading, but I have always used Thermaltake enclosures with fans and the one attached to the DVR runs 24/7 for years now, but they no longer include eSATA.

Basically I just like to have all options available, and for the cost of these things, it is a reasonable expectation, I think.
 
I've used several Vantec enclosures over the years and would recommend those. I don't know if their single drive enclosures have cooling fans in them though, but I know their 2 and 4 bay enclosures do. They have USB 3.0 and eSATA ports.
 
Thank you. I'll take a look at the multi-drive units.

Also, I just found this StarTech S3510BMU33ET

It uses ASRock ASM1053-6G bridge chip and has UASP for USB 3.0

Reviews on Amazon are mixed.

Anyone have any experience with the controller chip ?
 
SoManyBits said:
Thank you. I'll take a look at the multi-drive units.

Also, I just found this StarTech S3510BMU33ET

It uses ASRock ASM1053-6G bridge chip and has UASP for USB 3.0

Reviews on Amazon are mixed.

Anyone have any experience with the controller chip ?
Click to expand...
no fan i think, so i would expect heat issues after a while! Seagate's dont like to be in hot environments, or at least mine didn't. My replacement inside my cooled case has been flawless! mine was being used as a BD Media drive with several hundred movies so it wasnt being used 24/7 either. If the stupied fuicker would use the case as a heat sink, fans probably would be needed.....but hell its like their sealed in an insulated (plastic) box until they die lol.

Dont get me wrong, those enclosures look very good. Mine looked pretty to for a long time. I remember thinking fuck these things do get hot! Maybe mine died from something other than heat, lol idk:unsure:
 
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Thanks.

Hellstoaster, I looked at Vantec's site and found the folowing...

NST-400MX-S3R it holds two drives, but has only one set of connectors.
Similarly NST-620S3R-BK and NST-640SU3-BK & NST-640S3R-BK both for 4 drives.
I am not sure if my Acronis Backup program could handle a jbod enclosure.

There is also NST-330SU3 but that seems to be limited to SATA II drives and no larger than 3 GB.
 
SoManyBits said:
Thanks.

Hellstoaster, I looked at Vantec's site and found the folowing...

NST-400MX-S3R it holds two drives, but has only one set of connectors.
Similarly NST-620S3R-BK and NST-640SU3-BK & NST-640S3R-BK both for 4 drives.
I am not sure if my Acronis Backup program could handle a jbod enclosure.

There is also NST-330SU3 but that seems to be limited to SATA II drives and no larger than 3 GB.
Click to expand...

Indeed. Their multi-drive enclosures only have one set of connectors which can bog down a little if you are, say, copying from one drive in the enclosure to another within the enclosure or writing to two drives within the enclosure simultaneously. It isn't ideal in that sense. The drives within the enclosures are seen as individual drives by the system and you don't need to use the JBOD or raid features that the enclosures come with.

The two Vantec enclosures I'm currently using are the 2-bay NST-400MX-S3R and the 4-bay NST-640S3R-BK which support drives of at least 6TB (that's what I have in them.) I can't speak to their performance in RAID or JBOD as I haven't used them in that capacity. They've done well as simple enclosures with USB 3.0 and eSATA interfaces though.
 
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