External Enclosure Recommendations

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Fireballs

Gawd
Joined
Oct 27, 2000
Messages
942
I have bad luck with external enclosures, they never last more than 6 months before i have to buy a new one. Can anyone recommend a good quality 3.5" external enclosure?

Thanks
 
They're not all made the same. My #1 priority with an external enclosure is to get one with a good controller onboard, whether it be USB 2.0, Firewire, or both. I've got an nSpire 352C which features an Oxford 911 controller for the Firewire and the Cypress AT2 controller for USB 2.0. Those two chips together are probably the best combination you can find out there.

I recommend reading THIS thread on external enclosures. They describe the different controllers and what seperates the men from the boys.

Hope this helps.
 
Anything with an Oxford chipset will be fine. Stay away from the prolific (unlike i did), you will save yourself many headaches in the future.
 
*bump*

I'm in the same boat... looking to get a good quality external drive enclosure, but there are SO many of them, and so few reviews.

Anyone have any suggestions? On newegg, this model has a lot of good reviews, but it looks a bit bulky.
 
Hrm, I'm on the same boat here, trying to find a decent one but I read so much conflicting info and reviews (and there isn't much to begin with). I had looked over the above-linked thread already and heard about the Oxford chips but it's damned near impossible to tell what bridge chip is inside most of these enclosures.

I plan to use it as a backup drive so it HAS to be reliable, I'm on the brink of just buying something like a Netgear NAS box even if it's costlier (and more than I need) because I know it'll be dependable. I'd just do the backups across the network to another computer here if most of the other boxes weren't on wireless connections.

Bleh... Anyone have good long term experience with an avaliable enclosure that they can recommend?
 
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