SATA or IDE USB Enclosure.

[Starrx05]

I'm wondering if there's any advantage by using a SATA enclosure over an IDE one if both are connected via USB? It seems to me PATA drives are already fast, muc more than enough for USB and they're cheaper. I'm choosing to buy between 2 models. Of course the SATA one has the option to connect using an external SATA port but I'm not going to use that.

 

[Bobthelost]

Are you sure you won't ever use the eSATA option, if you are sure then just get whichever drive+enclosure works out cheaper. If there's no real difference then i'd go SATA just in case you want to connect it internally some day.

 

[Tarrant64]

A lot of the IDE enclusures tend to be cheaper, and most common. There are a few SATA's and they do tend to cost a few bucks extra.

Cheapest IDE
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817155515 (IDE)

Cheapest SATA
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817146318 (SATA)

If you browse around newegg there may be even better deals than that, as well as on some other sites.

 

[corkyg]

I tried an external SATA enclosure for a SATA drive, but eventually had to stop using it. The reason was, it was connected to one of the mobo's SATA ports, and thus, the system "saw" the drive as internal.

This led to not being able to turn off write caching, and ergo - I had constant delayed write errors. So, I just moved the drive inside in the normal drive cage, - end of problem.

But, I did not use a SATA to USB enclosure. That would have probably worked OK, but then the SATA drive's data flow rate would be that of USB. Since that is the bottleneck, both SATA and PATA USB externals would have the same general data flow rate. There would be no advantage of one over the other.

If this is TMI, I apologize.