Best aluminum external hard drive enclosures under $70.00
 

I posted about external hard drive enclosures in another thread, with a comment about suggestions coming, but I thought I will start this to make it easier then going back.

I am looking for external hard drive enclosures with good cooling mechanisms, a on off switch, fire wire 400/800, & USB. Also in sata & IDE, some of my hard drives are a little older.

Trying to find a perfect hard drive enclosure is almost a bit like finding the perfect girlfriend/boyfriend (especially as you get older). Sure, you'd love to have the cute girl that can cook and love to watch sports with you. Or maybe in your case, the athletic guy that will shower you with gifts and even loves to watch chicks flicks.

Unfortunately, in both cases, you have to be more realistic. There's not going to be a magic mate (or hard drive enclosure) that does everything you would like. You have to pick the most important things, and anything extra is just that -- an extra bonus.

At the core, what do you absolutely need? If you have more than one hard drive, then list out the drives one by one. For example, I have a SATA HDD and I need it to simply connect to the computer for my backups. I use a SATA USB2 dock. And then I have an older IDE drive used for backup, and it simply needs to connect. On it, I use a USB2 IDE enclosure. For another drive, I need speed, so it's eSATA. On yet another drive, I need standard Mac access, so it's Firewire 400 + USB2.

So ... what do you need? (vs what you want)

I need stability, & something that does not tax my computer too much, fairly fast for transfers of large files between drives. One drive will be for video projects. The others RAW & jpg photos.

My top enclosure choices:

You're a Mac girl, yes? Get this: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...SIN=B0013LRLUM
Macally G-S350SUA Hi-Speed eSATA/FireWire/USB2.0 Storage Enclosure for 3.5-Inch SATA HDD
That's a pretty nifty SATA enclosure, and I may buy myself one for my SATA drive that's currently sitting loose.
Only $30, free shipping.

This is another really, really nice SATA enclosure that I've used before: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...SIN=B000XQDTRW
Antec MX-100 3.5-Inch USB Aluminum --- seriously, very nice. Probably my top choice for SATA on USB2. And again, only $30 shipped.

For IDE, get this one: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...SIN=B0009HMT9Y
Vantec NexStar 3 NST-360U2-BL 3.5-Inch IDE to USB 2.0 External Hard Drive Enclosure (Midnight Blue)
It looks good and is also aluminum.

The biggest issue to watch for it that most enclosures only go up to 1.5TB. Some do 2TB. Few do more. So you need to READ, READ, READ if you're going for a huge drive. Read the descriptions carefully, maybe even visit the manufacturer's site for details (preferably to read the user manual as a PDF, if available).


Some replies...

Stability is really an issue of the drive, not the enclosure.
So either use or buy a good hard drive -- i.e. NOT Maxtor, whereas Seagate and Western Digital are the best ones.

Even the USB2 communication method, which uses some CPU, doesn't really tax the system.

This generally points to eSATA or Firewire 800. But to be perfectly honest, it's not like USB2 or Firewire 400 is "slow" by any means. In some cases, especially with IDE drives, that's about as fast as the transfer would have gone in or out of the system. With SATA drives, there's a case to be made with USB2/Fw400 slowing it down from potential read/write speeds.

Wise choice. :)


Weren't there some suggestions given to you in another thread? I think there were.