Recommended eSATA Enclosures?

[DarkRogue]

Hello,

I'm trying to find good enclosures before I splurge on some WD6400AAKS drives.
It's rough though, there aren't any really good places to find reviews of different types, so I'll have to rely on the community for this one.

The only enclosure I've ever owned is a Macally PHR-100A, IDE/USB single-bay enclosure. It works like a charm, but I'm looking to upgrade. I'd like the new one to have eSATA so I don't bottleneck the HDs in there, and be completely tool-less. The Macally I have requires several screws, and I just don't feel like taking it apart all the time.

I'd like to be able to swap drives around when I need to, so hot-swapping is a must.
RAID is not required, I will simply be using each drive individually (JBOD?)
Of course, I'd prefer it to be 2-bay (no more) although if no good ones exist, I'll have to settle for a single bay..

So, does anyone know of, or have experience with any enclosures that fit all of these requirements? Are there any that I should stay far, far away from?

Thanks in advance.

Edit:
I'm not a huge fan of fans (...) in the enclosure since it just adds extra noise, but if it's unavoidable, so be it. However, I would have a higher preference for an enclosure that's as small as possible. I don't want a massive brick sitting on my desk.

 

[Blain]

Why is "hot swap" a MUST in a non-RAID'd external enclosure? :roll:

 

[DarkRogue]

So that I can switch out hard drives when I need to move data around?
Is hot swap limited to be used by RAID or something?

 

[Blain]

No, it's just that most of the time a hot swap requirement is for replacing a HD in a RAID array.
I use Kingwin KF-1000BK hot swap bays in my PCs.

 

[DarkRogue]

Oh, I see.
I didn't mean to come off sounding mean or anything, looking back at what I typed. I just normally have more hard drives than I have available connections to my PC, and would like to make use of all of them.

Thanks for your suggestion, although I'm conflicted about whether to go for those bay-style ones or not.
On one hand, it would completely remove any bricks sitting on my desk. On the other hand, I lose portability, not being able to simply swap in pertinent data drives and bring it to a friend's house or something.

 

[Blain]

My main system has two of the Kingwin bays.
Yank a drive out, slap another one in... I love them! :laugh:

BTW, They're also cheap

 

[DarkRogue]

Oh, that is pretty cheap..

But I meant swapping in a drive, and then taking the entire enclosure over to another PC. With the bays, if I wanted to transfer data from a friend's PC, he'd need an enclosure as well, as I can only pull out the hard drive..

 

[Old Hippie]

I really have enough of these things, but I don't have a dual unit.....yet! :laugh:

I've had my eyeballs focused on this Vantec unit for a little while.

Other Vantec units I've seen were pretty nice stuff and that one looks like it follows the pattern.

I've also purchased an external unit with a swappable tray from Cooldrives. Look around the link I posted and see if anything suits your fancy.

The only unit I have without a fan, is one of those new fangled SATA docking units with the drive sitting out in the open. With no air movement around it, that thing gets a little toasty.

Other enclosures I've seen without a fan make the temps way too high for my comfort.

 

[DarkRogue]

I've taken a look at that Vantec unit as well, it looks pretty good except... !! Package Contents: Installation Screws.
Looks like there are 4 screws in the back if you need access to those drives.

That Cooldrives site looks like it has a pretty nice selection though, I'll browse that for a bit, thanks for the link - are they reputable?

As for the HD's being toasty, do you mean they get overly warm idling, or during activity? And how high?
I know it the HD's would get warmer if passively cooled than actively cooled, but 80mm fans are really pretty loud.. unless..say, I were to replace that with a Nexus or something lol.

 

[Old Hippie]

!! Package Contents: Installation Screws.

Woops, I missed that tidbit! Does this mean it's time to put the pipe down? :laugh:

Lemme tell ya about CoolDrives.... Good quality, fast shipping, stuff is as advertised.
The other side of the coin is, make sure you know what you want and order correctly. There's a lot of options and variables and they charge you out the ying-yang for returns.
The management, at least the support guy, is pretty much a major smart mouth penis-breath.
I've not had the pleasure of using their warranty service, but I'd be willing to bet it's on par with the CS.

I've seen drives in passively cooled enclosures hit the upper 60s low 70s in a short amount of time in service.
My active enclosures are 40-45c.

I suppose those temps are OK for short periods, but I use my externals for back-ups and am pretty careful with them.

 

[DarkRogue]

lol, thanks for that warning. The enclosures themselves don't look very cheap..some cost more than the cost of the drives I'd put in them!
Most of them also have those bloody screws.. A truly tool-less one seems quite rare.

 

[DarkRogue]

Okay.. I haven't really found any 2-bay enclosures that seemed like it would be worth it..

I suppose if that's the case, I'll just get a pair of single-bay ones, which are much more common.
SO, anyone have recommendations now for a good, single-bay, tool-less, eSATA enclosure with hot swap ability? (Is that last one even necessary on a single-bay enclosure?)

 

[DarkRogue]

Well, it seems there aren't so many tool-less enclosures at all..

Although, it seems one of the more recommended ones is this ICY DOCK enclosure..
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16817198008

It looks pretty good.. a bit on the expensive side, but it looks really small and tool-less.. I wonder if it supports hot-swap though.
Anyone have/use this, or similar ones?

 

[Blain]

Originally posted by: DarkRogue
Well, it seems there aren't so many tool-less enclosures at all..

Although, it seems one of the more recommended ones is this ICY DOCK enclosure...

Nobody recommended any ICY Dock enclosures in this thread. :roll:

 

[DarkRogue]

Lol, I meant after doing some googling.
Searching for tool-less eSata enclosures, I see Nspire, Welland, EagleTech and Icy Dock.. Of which, I only recognize the last one lol, but Anandtech does have reviews of two of their models (MB559 and MB664.)

 

[Madwand1]

Vantec and Thermaltake make a couple of simple docking stations you might want to look at.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16817392022
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16817153071

 

[DarkRogue]

Thanks for the tip!
I don't particularly like those though, they don't have much of any protection for the hard drive.

I think I'm leaning towards the MB664 though.
It looks ugly IMO, but you don't need to keep buying $25 trays like you do with the MB559.

 

[cusideabelincoln]

How many hard drives do you plan on buying?

For the price of some of these units, you might as well just consider buying a cheap external enclosure for each hard drive:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16817182134

This is just a thought. Obviously if you're buying like 10 hard drives I can see the benefit of hot-quick-swapability, but if you're only buying 2 or 3 then I don't see the problem with getting separate enclosures.

 

[DarkRogue]

For the moment, I plan on 2, however I'd like to keep my options open for more.
That linked one is for 2.5" hard drives by the way. I think I forgot to mention all this time that it was for 3.5" drives lol.

Anyway, I could go for cheap enclosures for everything, but I think it's more worthwhile to simply have 1 or 2 good ones and just swap them in and out as necessary - the exception is if I absolutely *need* all 10+ of them connected at once, then I'll need enclosures for all of them.