External Enclosures

[mayakindaguy]

Trying to decided between these two enclosures:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817145656

and

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817145131

Any suggestions as to, which is the better pick? An extra fan in a 3.5 would be nice I guess, but what good would it do since it's a 3.5. I was also thinking that the fan would get dusty. However, this might be better for longer file transfers.

I like the design of the second enclosure, but the nice finish is probably more prone to scratch. I'm also not sure whether you should have prolonged transfers on a fanless aluminum case.

 

[TechLarry]

To me, the AMS is Bugly (aka Butt-Ugly).

-Larry

 

[_Korruption_]

I'd go with the Vantec. I use a toque (Canadian!) to hold the enclosure during transportation to prevent scratches.

 

[Mr45]

I hate the 3.5" enclosures because then you have to screw around with an external power supply. I wouldn't trust them with hot running 7200rpm drives like the WD's.

My main portable hard drive is a 20Gb notebook drive in one of these enclosures. I've had no problems with heat during large transfers. Only downside is that you may have to use 2 USB ports, 1 for data and 1 for power as some drives pull more power than others. Then of course there's the expense of the notebook drive if you don't already have one and the largest is only 100Gb.

I also have a 5.25" Belkin enclosure similar to this one, mine doesn't have firewire. I like it because it uses a regular pc power cord and has a fan. I leave it on my bench with the top off and swap out drives when I need to see whats on them and backup peoples data. I also use a dvd burner in it once in a while for doing backups on a couple different systems.