Which cheap hard drive enclosure?

[taisingera]

I am looking to buy a USB3.0 2.5" hard drive enclosure for a 500GB 5400rpm laptop drive. I have it down to 2 Masscool units on Newegg, that are both under $20 and seem to have good reviews. Masscool UHB-2221U3 and UHB-2233. The first supports 12.5mm harddrives, but not that important, has miniUSB, a DC jack, on/off switch and OTB (even though Masscool says nothing about this feature on this model). The 2233 has USB-A connector, and cheap plastic ends and that's it.


Anybody want to weigh in on either of these enclosures?

 

[najames]

Can't help on USB3, but I got a Sabrent EC-UST25 Hard Drive Enclosure - 2.5 SATA to USB 2.0 from CompUSA for $9.99 and it works well. I use an old slow 250GB Fujitsu drive from wife's laptop and it writes about 30-40MB/s. It works with every PC I have, but not with the picky Cisco E4200 router though. No switches, no external power, no frills. It has 2 USB ports on the cable and I just zip-tied them together.

http://www.compusa.com/applications/...&Sku=M501-1031

 

[boochi]

USB 3.0 enclosures can be a real headache because the cables are so much more rigid than the ones that come with 2.0 enclosures.

 

[corkyg]

Sorry - I would never bother with any external enclosure of less quality than Vantec.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817392038

$25.99 w/free shipping? Why bother with plastic to savw the price of a candy bar?

 

[OlafSicky]

Sorry - I would never bother with any external enclosure of less quality than Vantec.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817392038

$25.99 w/free shipping? Why bother with plastic to savw the price of a candy bar?

I have this one and it works great

 

[taisingera]

Does anybody have this enclosure by AMS?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817332026

I used to have 2 AMS units back 6 years ago and they were pretty good.

 

[najames]

Sorry - I would never bother with any external enclosure of less quality than Vantec.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817392038

$25.99 w/free shipping? Why bother with plastic to savw the price of a candy bar?

The one I listed from Compusa is aluminum, but the ends are plastic. There are 300+ reviews online so I thought what the heck, for $10 I'll try it. In about 3 months of almost daily use it has worked well. I'd bet if I put in a faster drive it would transfer faster, the Fujutsu is S-L-O-W, but still less than the 480Mbps (60MBps) specs.

$15 candy bars must be big and delicious. 8>)