Hardrive Enclosures....

[Nessal]

Can anyone tell me more about these things? It fits a desktop size HD right? So basically you have an external HD drive connected through the USB port? I was looking through newegg and they have like 30 different kinds and I was wondering which ones are the best? What do I look for?

 

[pm]

Make sure that you don't buy one of the 2.5" enclosures - unless you have a 2.5" drive.

As far as which is best... there's 2.5" vs. 3.5", aluminum vs. plastic, there's fan-cooled vs. no-fan, there's firewire and USB 2.0 in the same enclosure vs. just USB 2.0. I opted for the cheapest that I could find at Newegg a few months ago which is here(3.5", plastic, no fan, just USB 2.0) and I've been happy enough with it. It looks like there are a few that are even cheaper now. The enclosure on the Bytecc is pretty flimsy, but I used some packing tape and it holds together well. The important part - reliability and compatibility - has been fine. No issues with it at all.

 

[iamtrout]

I second pm. I have this. If you get a ribbon cable for two drives you can actually hook up two drives, a burner and a drive, or two burners to this single enclosure. Of course, the lid will no longer fit, but duct tape fixes that. It's also very fast and can be accessed on a network. Overall very versatile and useful, and well worth the money.

 

[powerMarkymark]

Originally posted by: iamtrout
I second pm. I have this. If you get a ribbon cable for two drives you can actually hook up two drives, a burner and a drive, or two burners to this single enclosure. Of course, the lid will no longer fit, but duct tape fixes that. It's also very fast and can be accessed on a network. Overall very versatile and useful, and well worth the money.

Hey iamtrout, please tell or show me how you get two hard drives in that enclosure.

I have three of these enclosures and for the life of me I can't imagine how to go about it.

thnx

 

[pm]

Based on his comment about the lid no closing, I'm pretty sure that he's not actually fitting two drives into the enclosure physically.

But iamtrout's idea about being able to daisy-chain drives is really neat. I hadn't even thought of that. I bet it would work with mine too... if I want to completely sacrifice the looks of the thing. Thanks, trout, I'll keep that in mind if I ever need more storage on mine right now.

I have my Bytecc hooked up directly to a Netgear 634U router - the router takes a drive as an input and then you can see that drive on the network. Network Attached Storage on the cheap.

 

[Nessal]

God I'm such a stupid idiot! I bought a 2.5" Enclosure from Newegg because I thought it would fit a regular desktop HD. How is newegg with returns?

 

[pm]

Came close to doing that myself... well, I tried to warn you.

They are usually ok. I've returned a few things there... they are never thrilled to give out an RMA, but they will do it. You'll need to pay shipping.

 

[Abhi]

Cant you just cancel ur order?

 

[iamtrout]

If you have a laptop you may want to keep it. In the event that the lappy hard drive starts acting funny and doesn't boot, you can use the 2.5" that you just got to hook to your desktop, run scandisk, reformat, etc. That's what I did with mine and it saved me a couple hundred dollars of repair/replacement bill.

Daisy chained drives will definitely not fit in a 3.5" enclosure. Maybe 2 HDD could fit in one enclosure designed for a CD-ROM, which is what I have. Simply get an IDE cable with two drive hookups, plug it into the enclosure, and plug two drives into the cable. Master/Slave settings still need to be set (if CD-ROM and HDD at the same time, HDD needs to be master), and there might be a few performance anomalies like if you have a DVD burner and HDD at the same time, the burning might not go so well if you're transferring to the HDD hardcore.

 

[Nessal]

Originally posted by: pm
Came close to doing that myself... well, I tried to warn you.

They are usually ok. I've returned a few things there... they are never thrilled to give out an RMA, but they will do it. You'll need to pay shipping.

 

[Nessal]

Originally posted by: pm
Came close to doing that myself... well, I tried to warn you.

They are usually ok. I've returned a few things there... they are never thrilled to give out an RMA, but they will do it. You'll need to pay shipping.

The thing is, I ordered this before I asked this question...it was when they had the sale for black friday...argh...maybe a buddy of mine can use it.