External Hard Drive Enclosures?

AdmiralWeirdbeard wonders: "I've been looking to put together an external hard drive for use with my Mac Mini. Obviously, the built-in storage is not sufficient. However, I know nothing about what makes an external enclosure good or bad, and have found nothing but mixed reviews for even the best rated enclosures on Newegg and Amazon. Every model seems to have at least one person complaining of an enclosure that fried the drive through overheating. The literature I've read seems to focus on the pros and cons of the various enclosures for big (50+gb) weekly or even daily system backups. I dont need anything for regular backups, but rather just for storage of my music, movies, and other miscellaneous data. Any ideas on the pros and cons of fan/fanless, construction materials, and different brands out there?"

Comments

Answer: MacAlly

[failedlogic]

As an iMac G5 user:

I have a MacAlly firewire HDD enclosure it works great. If you Mini has firewire, stick with Wirewire. This one also has USB. I've yet to try the USB. Check the chipset the board uses inside the Oxford 911 firewire is the best firewire (according to reviews, I've yet to test it). Again, IMO the MacAlly is superb. I also have one of their 5 1/4" firewire enclosures for a DVD burner. Works great.

One brand I would avoid though: Bytecc. I have one of their USB enclosures. It rarely, if ever, mounts in OSX. It wasn't such a problem in XP though. I don't know if the fault is with the chipset (its a VIA, surprised?!) or with Apple supporting the chipset. Overall, though the transfer rate (with the same drive) is much slower than the MacAlly.

If you want a cool looking one, there is a firewire enclosure that looks like a mini-G5 aluminum tower. I'd have bought one but the fees to import into Canada would have been a bit high.

As an aside, when are SATA enclosures going to be more readily avaialble. The only ones out now have a premium price attached to it.

There. Now digest all the information. I always type more than I need to! :)

Re:Answer: MacAlly

[NotoriousQ]

I second MacAlly. Works with a 300Gb drive. Good fanless (I think) cooling. Firewire. Never had a single problem with my linux box. Only paid about $10 more than a generic USB2 enclosure.

Re:Answer: MacAlly

[Phreakiture]

As an aside, when are SATA enclosures going to be more readily avaialble. The only ones out now have a premium price attached to it.

This will probably happen when it becomes necessary due to a low availability of PATA drives. Don't expect much benefit, though. Firewire 400 transfers at 50MB/s ((400Mbit/s) / (8bit/B) = 50MB/s) and Firewire 800 at 100MB/s (similar math). As such, the Firewire is the bottleneck (at least from a signalling perspective).

On Firewire 400, an ATA/66 drive will only show a 50% improvement over an ATA/33, and ATA/100, ATA/133, SATA/150 or SATA/300 should put in the same performance as ATA/66 (exception caused by smarter drive electronics noted).

On Firewire 800, things are slightly less limited, with ATA/66 putting in the expected 100% boost over ATA/33, and ATA/100 giving another 50% over ATA/66. It stops there, though, with ATA/133, SATA/150 and SATA/300 giving the same performance as ATA/100

Of course, this is a simplistic analysis. It ignores the overhead of the firewire interface (which is less than the overhead of USB, which, in turn is why USB at 480Mbit/s gets consistently smoked by Firewire at 400Mbit/s) and it ignores the logic on board the drive, and it ignores the drive mechanics. It's pretty likely that an SATA/300 drive will have smarter logic and faster mechanics than an ATA/100 drive, but that doesn't make it so.

Bottom line, there really isn't a lot of benefit in making an SATA enclosure at this time, and probably won't be until PATA drives become an endangered species.

Avoid Ultra

[macdaddy357]

Avoid the plastic one from Ultra being sold at Tiger Direct. Its power supply is woefully inadequate for most hard drives. It does not even have separate 12v and 5v lines, a must for any WD drive, and many other power hungry ones as well. A Samsung 30 gig 5400 rpm drive is the best mine can accomodate. Also, the thing has no on/off switch unless they have re-designed it, and has a terrible vibration problem that will make yuu crazy with the noise unlesss you set it sideways on something soft like a plastic anti-skid pad.

If you get a drive cage made of aluminum, there is no need for a noise-making and dust-sucking fan.

VANTEC Nexstar line

[Stigmata669]

I purchased a very inexpensive Vantec Nexstar USB2.0/Firewire enclosure, and have been very impressed. The plastic of the enclosure feels cheap, however it comes with rubber HD mounts so that you isolate any drive vibrations from the desk/ground.

For any enclosure, the two things to look for are: type of bridge i.e. Oxford900/911/922, and whether there is an integrated fan.

The Oxford900 is the legacy chip, do not buy one. The Oxford911 is compatible with large HDs and the 922 is Firewire800. I use my enclosure for backup so heat was not an issue, however if you plan on using the drive full time, or as a boot drive, look into a more expensive enclosure that comes with a fan.

If you want to keep with the Mac Mini styling and have extra $$ to burn, consider these: http://www.123macmini.com/accessories/guide/enclos ures.html

otherwise the Vantecs are fine: http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.asp?Subm it=Go&DEPA=0&type=&description=nexstar&Category=0& minPrice=&maxPrice=&Go.x=0&Go.y=0

Re:VANTEC Nexstar line

[SILIZIUMM]

I agree!

I have both Nextstar 2 and 3 enclosures (USB 2.0) and I'm quite happy with both. The Nexstar 2 is made with cheap plastic, but since it holds my backup hard drive it doesn't matter too much (the drive is plugged for not very long anyways). The rubber paddings are quite nice too.

Having this enclosure, I needed another one, to hold my primary external storage on my laptop. I bought the Nexstar 3 since I found the NS2 good enough, and because the NS3 is made of aluminium instead of plastic (since this enclosure is mostly always powered, I needed an enclosure that can dissipate heat). It is very nice, a bit smaller than the NS2 and without rubber pads, but the HDD is quite tight inside it so the heat can dissipate very easily. Plus, it looks quite nice.

On a sidenote, Vantec support is excellent. I accidently broke one of the 2" IDE cables, and they sent me another one at no cost and very quickly. Recommended!

Re:VANTEC Nexstar line

[RGRistroph]

I purchased 6 of those Nextar enclosures, of the type that are the first two listed at the link you gave.

The enclosure is not much bigger than the drive itself, and it's difficult to jigger the drive into there. They cut the space way too close.

After a few weeks of use, one of them failed; when I handled the failed enclosure, I could hear something rattling around inside. Inspection showed that the back of the plastic molex connector was pushing up against the circuit board, and it had flaked off a small 8 pin surface mount chip.

If you shave down the plastic of the molex connector with a knife prior to installation, it easier to insert in the disk and probably more reliable. I stopped using those enclosures though, and never put a disk in the other ones.

Re:Another question about enclosures

[Stigmata669]

Bus powered enclosures only come in 2.5" varieties, and even then, high rpm 12mm 2.5" HDs sometimes draw more power than the USB bus can deliver. The Firewire bus can deliver more power and should be able to power any 2.5" HD. No 3.5" HDs can be powered by a USB or Firewire bus to my knowledge.

Nicest one I've seen

[wheresdrew]

Newertech has a great one called the miniStack. USB 2.0 or Firewire, and has hubs for both built-in. It's available as a bare case or with a drive preinstalled.

Have Fan?

[thegrassyknowl]

One of the things that always strikes me about a lot of USB hard disk enclosures is how tiny they are and how hot disks run when in them. Try and get one with a small fan in the back. It will move a bit of air and help your disk to last longer. If you can't get one with a fan and portability isn't an issue, try and get a 5.25" one and a couple of mounting brackets for a 3.5" disk. The extra room will mean the disk runs slightly cooler. The 5.25" ones tend to have removable front panels too, so you can stick in a grille with a filter instead of a blank panel to improve ventilation.

If you're using it with your Mac Mini, I'd suggest that having another brick to plug into the wall isn't as big of an issue than if you were using it with your Powerbook or something. Bus powered enclusures won't power a lot of bigger disks - the USB spec doesn't provide for more than about 2.5W on the whole bus, and you lose a bit in hubs and controllers as well so there's not much left to power the disk. FireWire can provide a bit more power, and I've seen bus-powered FireWire enclosures that work quite well (if you have the larger, powered, FireWire socket on the Mac Mini rather than the mini, non-powered, one).

Make sure the enclosure is USB2 capable, and some come with FireWire as well. The dual support ones (in my experience) are more reliable and better built. FireWire is reportedly a bit faster than USB2 for sustained transfer rates, but I have never been able to demonstrate that.

Don't buy a bay with a disk in it. You pay a fortune for them compared to buying a good bay and a disk separately. Seagate and Maxtor both have them. Sure, they work and are good for people who can't use a screwdriver but you pay a premium for some guy in Taiwan to use his screwdriver instead.

Re:Have Fan?

[cgenman]

If you don't mind modding your enclosure, the wire running into your drive should be serving up 12v of power on a standard molex connector... Just cut a hole in your casing and add a 12v fan to the side. Or really, add a 24 volt fan to the side, as that will run fast enough yet still be quiet.

Other options include as was mentioned above getting an enclosure that will fit a 5.25" drive, but adding one of the aftermarket drive bay coolers to the deal. Again, try to get one whose fan speed you can turn down.

Or buy an external drive bay, strip off the outer shell, and put it in a big box with a lot of air.

You really do need a fan for external hard drives... Be careful though, the smaller the fan, and the more porous the enclosure, the more noise it makes. So if you want to enjoy your Mini, make sure to get a slower spinning, Fluid-dynamic-bearing drive, and an enclosure with a really big, slow spinning fan. Both Maxtor and Seagate have good FDB drives. Western Digital, on the other hand, is to be avoided like the plague.

And yes, get your drive and enclosure separately.

Sabrent enclosure

[codehead]

After I upgraded my laptop's HD I got a SABRENT SBT-EKU25 External Enclosure for the old drive. It's USB powered, it's incredibly lightweight and works great under Linux and Windows.

Re:Another question about enclosures

[Anonymous Coward]

2.5" drives can be powered over USB. Most of the 2.5" enclosures I looked at have 2 usb plugs, if extra power is needed. So far my 60GB 2.5" drive is running fine plugged into one port.

Other World Computing

[phillymjs]

I picked up one of these in the beginning of the year, and put a 200GB drive in it. I keep all my installers, client drive images, and utilities on it, divided over six partitions. It has FireWire 800, FireWire 400, and USB2 connectors.

It replaced an identical enclosure that only offered FireWire 400 and USB2 that I bought a couple years ago, which had a 120GB drive in it.

Both enclosures are fanless, but I never had a problem with either drive due to heat. They don't run 24/7, but I've had them on for fairly long stretches. My only gripe with them is very minor: the blue activity LED is friggin' blinding-- I ended up taping a small square of copy paper over it to mute it a little bit.

~Philly

Re:Why do USB drives fail under linux?

[Col. Klink (retired)]

I've seen this USB bug as well. The solution is to set CONFIG_SCSI_DEBUG_QUEUES=y ("Enable extra checks in new queuing code" under "SCSI Support" in the 2.4 series).

If speed and capacity are not critical

[WoTG]

If speed and capacity are not critical I would definitely recommend the smaller "laptop" enclosures. The 2.5inch drives don't use as much energy (so overheating is less likely). Since they use so little power, they can be USB powered, which keeps the cabling to a minimum. Plus they're sooo much smaller that it's a relative pleasure to move them around.

The downsides are that GB per GB, the drives are more expensive. They're also slower than desktop hard drives since they have lower bit density and generally lower rotational speeds. And drives are not available in the same capacities. The biggest 2.5 inch drives are about 100GB (i think), versus 500GB for the latest 3.5 inch drives.

Two ways to go

[tedgyz]

2.5" (laptop)
  or
3.5"

My first drive I bought is a SmartDisk Firelite. They make USB and FireWire versions. These come with an HD pre-installed.

I have since bought a 2.5" enclosure - Vantec NexStar. This is a USB2.0 enclosure for 2.5" drives. Very handy for making use of old laptop drives. The best part is that these new ones pull power off the USB line. I can't speak to the FireWire drives.

I also have some high capacity 3.5" drives in external enclosures. One is a Metal Gear Box. The other is a Mad Dog. The Metal Gear unit is all aluminum with vented sides for maximum cooling. The Mad Dog is not so good for cooling. It is a tight fit and the outer case feels like plastic. Also, the Mad Dog plays havoc with AM radios. I suspect it is because it is a non-metal housing. Well, it says it is anodized aluminum, but it feels more like plastic.

Generally speaking, you will pay a lot more per GB for a pre-installed hard drive, compared with smart shopping for bargains on enclosures and drives.

Good luck.