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External Hard Drive Enclosures?

Posted by Cliff on from the dance-of-the-storage-peripherals dept.

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?"

8 of 82 comments (clear)

  1. External MacMini Drives by spiralscratch · · Score: 4, Interesting

    There are a number of drives available that are specifically designed to sit perfectly under the Mini itself and feature the same basic color/design/etc. Most also feature USB2 and Firewire hubs. I think LaCie and Other World Computing have models, as well as a couple other manufacturers.

    Try skimming MacWorld, Macintouch, XLR8yourmac, etc. for reviews.

    I believe that the general consensus is that drives with an Oxford USB/firewire to IDE bridge are best, though I've not had the opportunity to verify this myself.

  2. Re:Another question about enclosures by spiralscratch · · Score: 1, Interesting

    I'm not aware of any external drives that use standard hard drives (i.e., not flash memory based) that can be powered via the USB bus. Maybe some of the tiny 1.8" drives can be.

    Most externals based on 2.5" drives can be powered by the firewire bus.

    Any of the above are going to be more expensive that a drive based on the 3.5" form factor. Unless you expect to be moving this drive around a lot and using it with different systems, I'd stick with a 3.5" drive for performance and cost considerations.

  3. Re:Avoid Ultra by macdaddy357 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    It has an ac adapter with a standard round connector that can provide a maximum of 2 amps at 12v. It relies on its circuit board to change some of that into 5v. The 200 gig WD drive I tried to use with it simply did not get enough power to operate reliably. If I remember the specs right it draws 1.2 amps of 12v and 0.75 amps of 5v. The Samsung in it now requires a lot less juice. Other enclosures have a power brick with a 4-pin connector; 12v, 5v and two grounds. Those are more likely to work reliably. I also had driver problems with that enclosure's IEEE 1394, and had to use USB.

    --
    How ya like dat?
  4. Re:Why do USB drives fail under linux? by NotoriousQ · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I have seen it. It is a very curious problem. Linux, as far as I know, still sees the device, but the device stops responding. I think what happens is that linux feeds them data in a way that they should handle, but do not, due to bugs. And when they crash, linux does not reset them. The drives work in windows because those bugs have been found by testing done by manufacturer.

    At least this is what I think is happening. Any kdev willing to be more helpful?

    There is a similar problem with firewire, where, for some reason, the io gets reordered wrong and it confuses the drive. There is an option for serializing IO that works like a charm. My external firewire drive has an uptime of a few months now.

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    badness 10000
  5. Get Oxford911 based FW and stay away from Prolific by mTor · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I've had 5 different HDD enclosures and from my experience Oxford 911 is the only chipset that works with FW devices. I have a Mac as well and FW is the way to go. It's much faster than USB2. Stay away from USB2.

    Also, whatever you buy, make sure it is not based on PROLIFIC chipset! It's an absolute crap and I've lost 2 different hard drives because of it. Prolific claims FW support when in fact its support is shoddy at best. You'll lose your data and, eventually, you'll lose your drive. If the chipset is not listed, it probably is a Prolific chipset. Seek enclosures that have Oxford911 in the name... just to make sure.

    Good luck!

  6. My suggestion, AMS VENUS DS-2316CBK by noth(a)nk.you · · Score: 3, Interesting
    After losing a hard drive to a cheap enclosure (heat!) just over a year ago, I spent a little while looking around and found the AMS VENUS DS-2316CBK (the USB/Firewire one).

    A few features I was looking for (and found):

    • Solid construction- a lot of metal with some plastic trim for looks (and it looks good)
    • Low temperature- a built-in fan (which is _whisper_ quiet) blowing on the circuit board of the HDD
    • Good engineering- haven't yet had a problem interfacing with my XPPro laptop (in either USB or Firewire); can run multiples through USB hubs or just daisy-chained with Firewire; movable power connector adjusts to fit your drive

    If you want more info, I found:

    My only complaint, it needs to be pretty exposed (i.e. to open air) to stay _cool_. I recently stuck mine in a cramped spot above a bunch of transformers, so I rigged up a case fan a few inches underneath (12V fan running off 5V to stay quiet) and it's cool to the touch again!
  7. Re:VANTEC Nexstar line by cowbutt · · Score: 2, Interesting
    For your purposes the Nexstar 2 will suck. I have one. It uses a Prolific chipset which is considered inferior to the standard Oxford one

    I wondered how many posts I'd need to read before someone ranted about Prolific's USB/1394-ATA bridge chips. Not many!

    I submitted an entry for Linux's unusual_devs.h to say that the PL-3507 USB/1394 bridge misreports the number of blocks by 1 (a common bug, based on a misinterpretation of the SCSI spec, IIRC). That's fair enough - everyone gets stuff wrong from time to time, but a later firmware revision fixes the problem without making it distinguishable from the version with the bug (e.g. by incrementing the USB ProductID or something). To make matters worse, some devices that use the PL-3507 store the firmware on flash chips that aren't programmable in-circuit, so they're stuck at the firmware level they ship with.

    Further, many firmware revisions have serious problems with their 1394 implementation. There are various hacks to work around them, but is it really worth the trouble?

  8. PHR-250CC by kentborg · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I bought a PHR-250CC from Newegg (I think it was). I also bought a 2.5" drive that installed rather easily. (You need a very small phillips screw driver and you need to slide it together with the correct edge going into the correct slot.)

    It has both USB 2.0 and 1394 jacks. It comes with a heavy USB cable that will power it off my notebook, but it also comes with a second USB-to-power connector cable for computers that put off less power. It also comes with a heavy 1394 cable that presumably will power it if you have a 6-pin Firewire jack.

    It works great with my Linux machine, I get 27 MB/s on it. I haven't tried the 1394, but at least some of the time this model is marketed under the Macally name, so I bet it works fine with a Macintosh.

    The drive is mostly metal. I don't coddle it, but it seems to stand up well. I'd buy another.

    -kb