Best external enclosure?

[Nocturnal]

Main reason I need an enclosure, I do data backups at work. I take client's hard drives, put them into the enclosures and back their data up that way. This is ten times easier than shutting down my computer, plugging their drive into my IDE cable and then doing it this way.

I already had a CompUSA external enclosure and it stopped recognizing the hard drives. I didn't even remove the USB/power cable, ever. It's always been plugged in so I know that the connectors aren't worn or anything like that.

What would in your opinion be the best external enclosure for something like this?

What company offers the longest warranty past one year?

I'm thinking about getting the Adaptec external enclosure from Best Buy as we had one at work but what happend was the USB/power adapter kept being unplugged and plugged back in which eventually lead to it not working properly. If you hold either the power or the USB cable in it will recognize but not if you just let it sit by itself.

 

[tweekah]

I'd recommend http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817145656

 

[ribbon13]

Yeah, the AMS enclosures are the nicest ones I've ever used. This one would be the 'best' though, but the one tweekah linked is fine if you have zero access to firewire.

Is it a single drive? or do you keep changing them into the enclosure? If so, this might be more convenient

 

[cavingjan]

Originally posted by: ribbon13
Is it a single drive? or do you keep changing them into the enclosure? If so, this might be more convenient

That does come with a power adapter too, correct? That may be just what I've been looking for.

 

[V00D00]

That Sabrent is good, but the power adapter with it is not good quality.

I bought one of those on ebay. The first power adapter didn't work straight up, the little light never came on. The second power adapter would work intermittently when the cable was alighned just right, and then it freaked out and the 5v was spitting out 7v. I only measured it after it killed one of my drives. Now my drive doesn't spin up anymore, it was as if the power adapter stuck a knife through it's heart.

The good thing about that Sabrent is that it uses the Genesis GL.... chipset. The Genesis is better than the ALI chipset, but what you really want is the Prolific chipset.

The prolific chipset has the highest throughput (about 39MB/sec, which happens to be the MAX output of USB 2.0). The Genesis comes in at around 35MB/sec, and the poor ALI chipset comes in last at 27MB/sec.

I did a bunch of benchmarks, but I haven't put them on the web anywhere, I'll try and get them on my website tonight so you can see for yourself.

A cheap enclosure that uses the prolific chipset is this one:
Plumax something or other

You can't beat $21 bucks, and it doesn't look bad at all. It's a great alternative to the $60+ Vanec Nexstar III, (which uses the same prolific chipset)

 

[Nocturnal]

TTT. I'm looking for something that is very heavy-duty meaning I do change the drive often.