I'm gettting confused about hard drive enclosures, which I know very little about.
I have built a system for a friend with an Asus A8N SLi Deluxe motherboard. This comes with an external SATA bracket (including power connector).
He wants to buy an external enclosure for back-up and moving data around. So, I think, great, get an enclosure with an SATA interface because this will be faster than Firewire and USB. But then I think it would be nice to have a USB interface too so that he can hook it up to his non-nforce4 PCs (and other people's PCs). Why not have 1394a/b as well to speed things up if external SATA is not available.
Then I start wondering about the internal interface. Surely, for maximum flexibility, it would be good if the enclosure could take both IDE and SATA drives. Maybe he just needs an enclosure that is big enough for him to fit any necessary adapter inside.
Then, I think about hot-plugging/hot-swapping and whether he would need support for SATA-II either from the enclosure or from any drive that he puts in or both.
Finally, I think about build-quality, including heat and noise issues, and also about price.
So, you see, from my uninformed perspective, there seem to be a lot of issues and they don't seem to be covered in much depth in reviews I have read. I have looked at Tom's review of 15 enclosures and I have trawled Storagereview's forums and I am still not clear on what solutions are out there. None of the enclosures reviewed at Tom's accepts both IDE and SATA drives - do they even exist, or can one get one that will work with an adapter?
Tom's review mentions the Lindy ME-720U2SI, which has external SATA and USB, but it only accepts IDE drives internally. Confusingly, in the review of it, he starts by referring to the ME-720U2IDE as an alternative enclosure with external SATA - but paradoxically he says about this model, with "IDE" in its name: "it's clear that it won't take an IDE hard drive".
Guidance or links please!
I have built a system for a friend with an Asus A8N SLi Deluxe motherboard. This comes with an external SATA bracket (including power connector).
He wants to buy an external enclosure for back-up and moving data around. So, I think, great, get an enclosure with an SATA interface because this will be faster than Firewire and USB. But then I think it would be nice to have a USB interface too so that he can hook it up to his non-nforce4 PCs (and other people's PCs). Why not have 1394a/b as well to speed things up if external SATA is not available.
Then I start wondering about the internal interface. Surely, for maximum flexibility, it would be good if the enclosure could take both IDE and SATA drives. Maybe he just needs an enclosure that is big enough for him to fit any necessary adapter inside.
Then, I think about hot-plugging/hot-swapping and whether he would need support for SATA-II either from the enclosure or from any drive that he puts in or both.
Finally, I think about build-quality, including heat and noise issues, and also about price.
So, you see, from my uninformed perspective, there seem to be a lot of issues and they don't seem to be covered in much depth in reviews I have read. I have looked at Tom's review of 15 enclosures and I have trawled Storagereview's forums and I am still not clear on what solutions are out there. None of the enclosures reviewed at Tom's accepts both IDE and SATA drives - do they even exist, or can one get one that will work with an adapter?
Tom's review mentions the Lindy ME-720U2SI, which has external SATA and USB, but it only accepts IDE drives internally. Confusingly, in the review of it, he starts by referring to the ME-720U2IDE as an alternative enclosure with external SATA - but paradoxically he says about this model, with "IDE" in its name: "it's clear that it won't take an IDE hard drive".
Guidance or links please!
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