Wanted: External Enclosure Recommendations

[char507]

Hi,

Since I have had trouble running a VM off of the primary HD in my Macbook Pro, I figured I would try it out on a secondary drive.

What I am looking for are recommendations on an external enclosure that supports Firewire 800. I have heard that buying the enclosure and drive yourself usually yields better results than buying a pre-built drive.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Menelmarar]

Mainly because you can pick and know exactly what drive is installed in it, and it's not a really budget OEM style drive.

You can get some cheap knockoff enclosure's with shitty electronics, I wouldn't pickup a housebrand for example. I've used several Vantec's Nexstar 3's and been very pleased with them aesthetically and for performance. Al enclosure, glossy black with chrome highlight, enclosure is designed to be stackable with each other, feet interlock into top like the old linksys routers, very slick. I use eSATA for performance, maybe they have a FW800 version?

I know some of my Macbook friends use Lacie's Rugged line, dunno what drive they have in them, but the enclosure is pretty nice, very light Al heat dissipating enclosure, and rubber bumper wrap around it. Heard no complaints from them. Definitely a FW800 version.

 

[Lateralus]

It's not the prettiest thing, but this gets decent reviews (note: it's for 2.5" drives; not sure if you're willing to go that way or not).

There's also this one from Icy Dock which is considerably more expensive. They normally make premium external enclosures but I'm not sure if it's worth the extra money to you.