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most rugged 3.5" enclosure?

G

gospeedracergo1

n00b
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Aug 22, 2004
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I've googled around quite a bit, read a bunch of newegg cutomer reviews, and searched the [h] forums, and still haven't been able to get a solid answer to this.

I'm strapped for storage space, both local and portable. I'm planning of upgrading my 120gig hd to something more roomy and getting an enclosure for my current drive for portable storage. The trouble is that this drive and enclosure will be carted all over town/campus/anywhere in my bookbag as I travel on my bike. As such, I'm looking for an enclosure that is as rugged as possible, both in it's own structure and how well it protects the drive from shock. The few full reviews and most of the customer reviews I've found on enclosures concentrate more on style, size, and whether or not there are rave party style lighting effects included, all things that are low on my priority list. I'm hoping someone here might have some personal experience (or other knowledge) on an enclosure or two.

Size isn't much of an issue, (but of course, smaller is better) and i'd acually prefer it doesn't have any lights save a purely functional activity led. All I really want is something that can take a beating.

Any information would be greatly appreciated.
 
Ice may be onto something. I had the same questions to myself : "How much data do I need to transport?" and I came up with the following answer.

650MB. Soo... I thought about getting a flash drive. Small, portable and available for the size I needed. I picked one up at Staples BF sale for $20 and tried it out. Its slow... too slow. I realized that they weren't going to meet my needs for a 650MB solution (ie. an ISO from work to home, or vice versa). I did want more than the 256, so I bought a 512. I just didnt really need to cart around a gig stick when it would take 20-30 mins to write to the drive. I _want_ it, but I cant think of any situations where I would _have_ to have it.

If yer transporting stuff to a friends place, yeah, I can see getting an enclosure.

If its for day-to-day work, a flash drive is your best bet _and_ get an enclosure that you can transport on the occasions that you reallly _need_ to bring over those 20 DVD rips to your bud's house.


Get both, a day-to-day storage solution and the enclosure for the less frequent trips.

Both are inexpensive at this point.
 
I know absolutely nothing specific about this product
however I do know about its component parts
http://www.beststuff.co.uk/micro_hdd.htm
2.2GB

IBM Microdrives, and other makes of microdrives like you find in Ipods? handhelds, cameras ect
have a very small platter extremely rigid armeture, little to no flex in that small a platter and are very robust often surviving a 1 foot drop
that would be the ideal marrige for a small mobile, I figured there had to be one with a USB interface out there somewhere and looking found this return,
youd likely get decent performance (typical USB performance), better than flash
if youve ever run a microdrive in a camera, care is still needed

flash offers the advantage of being solid state and is even more robust, but has its own drawbacks
typically the number of writes it can take, and performance
anyone that has a digital camera, likely has a bad flash card somewhere too


again no specific information or recommendation
http://www.buslink.com/ver2/microHD.htm
this one requires a Flash Type II slot (which is far more common)

http://www.flash-memory-store.com/micusbcamwit.html
"With media transfer rates of up to 45.2 Mb/sec and rotational speeds of 4500 RPM (340MB) 3600 rpm (1GB), the IBM microdrive offers performance advantages over current flash memory."
(I question those transfer rates, likely they are burst not sustained)

http://www.cewindows.net/wce/microdrive.htm
"Because it is a hard drive, I found myself treating it like it’s oversized siblings, delicately handling it like a Faberge egg, until I inadvertently knocked it off my desk where it fell 2 ½ feet to the carpeted floor, apparently no worse for the wear."

http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/micro/overvw.htm
Hitachi Microdrives
"Current Microdrive capacities include 4GB, 2GB, 1GB, 500 MB and 340 MB. The 4GB lets you carry a whole continent of maps or 1,000 songs in your pocket."

ah ha real performance data
http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/micro/micro3k4.htm
128kb cache
with a sustained transfer rate of 4.3 to 7.2 MB/s
12ms average seek time
 
I have a couple of the Metal Gear Solid 3.5 drive enclosures. Made out of alumimum. Unfortunately the drive is solid mounted to the aluminum sides so it's not insulated for shock. that plus it's big adn has a power cord with brick you have to carry means it's not really portable.

For big portable space I use a couple of the 2.5 laptop drive enclosures. No power cord necessary and much smaller. I have one that does USB and Firewire and is reletively small and another enclosure that is just barely a little longer than the laptop drive itself and no thicker or wider. I stick it inside an insulated glove for transport in a bag, never had a problem with them, they rock.
 
exactly what I suggested in the cheap seats DIY category ;)
(those two links above)
2.5" form factor in substantaily better than 3.5" for rigidity
and alot of development has gone into making them reliable mobile devices
they still arent as good as a microdrive, and are the most common component that needs to be replaced in a laptop
but far far better than the typical internal 3.5" HDD
and with better performance and storage capacity than a microdrive
 
What ever you buy don't get the enermax enclosure from newegg that is advertised as rugged design. That thing is a flimsy POS.

I also have a metal gear case like MaxBurn. It's built solid but you're not really going to find good shock protection in these external cases. You're pretty much stuck with the power bricks unless you look at getting the USB powered ones. But I've read bad things about them.

Get a seagate drive with the 350G shock protection and always keep it backed up on your main system.

Of course everyones previous post make good sense too.
 
hmmm.... belatated thanks to everyone for the replies.

Yeah, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that even the best designed enclosure that's smaller than a breifcase can't possible allow a 3.5" hd to survive. Also, I decided that I don't need a larger hd as much as a need to drop my pack-rat tendancies.

I still definately need more portable storage, my 256mb thumbdrive is way to small for the digital imaging, modeling, and animation projects that I have to cart around. A larger thumbdrive, 1gb for example, would work fine... until I have a video project or two.

I think my best option (which still lets me kill a couble birds with one stone) is one of the gmini mp3 players from archos, probably the 120. It functions as a usb 2.0 portable hard disk and even has a compact flash slot for transfering digicam picks. No more rationing space while on vacation.... and it plays music. The 20gig hd is smaller than I'd like (40-60 would be better), but it should suffice. Even if it doesn't, I've already found one guide for updgrading the standard laptop harddrive, so that's always a possiblity.

Once again, thanks for the info.
 
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