External Hard Drive Enclosures
I’m looking at getting some external hard drive enclosures – some to connect to a media center, some just for backup. Prefer standalone cases with bare drives added.
Anyone got any experience with these / recommendations?
Requirements: Take bare SATA2 drive. Connectivity – ESATA, USB2. 3.5 inch case only. Quiet. Price isn’t an issue, just looking for something that’s reliable. No need for RAID or multiple drives in one enclosure or a NAS box at this stage.
If it’s sold by IJK… even better.
http://ijk.com.au/branch/ijk/index.php?cPath=306_427
Will be adding a 3.5” 1.5TB Seagate hard drive to each of the enclosures.
Thanks in advance.
Comments
Antec MX-1
Antec MX-1 I liked the look of. Good review of it on silentpc, but it’s got a cooling fan in it, which is good, but not so great for noise. That and recent reports say new ones are not as quiet as it was when silentpc reviewed it.
HDD External
I have 3 of the NetxStar
1 IDE and 2 Sata / eSata
V nice and solid to boot
ta
Robag
Sleeping HDDs
Make sure the drive will spin down when inactive for an amount of time. If you are keeping it plugged in and powered on the whole time this is very important.
Mine didn’t, and got very hot overnight, and I’m sure would have had a much lesser lifespan if I hadn’t worked out how to send a SATA sleep command from the OS whenever it was idle for 20 mins or more. Some drive enclosures come with firmware that does this for you, or Windows drivers which do this, so look for those ones.
In the IJK listing, for example, I can quickly find that the Coolermaster enclosure won’t spin down, but the Blue Eye S3380 probably will. You usually have to go find the manufacturer data sheet or a good review of the drive to find this out for sure.
Edit: eSATA is probably fine to do this by just Windows power management settings, but cases are reported of enclosures that simply won’t respond to a SATA sleep command. Worth making sure.
WD n0l0nger = W0nky Drive
I w0uld rec0mmend;
WD TV box
WD External 1TB Hard Drive
I have 2 dead NONAME BRAND encl0sure cases that died f0r sum unkn0wn reas0n with standard
IDE Hard Drives in them , s0 I’ll never g0 that way again.
I’m very happy with The external WD drive as the best thing is it p0wers d0wn by itself so It’s perfect
leaving it 0n all night in the l0unge r00m, and since I g0t the WD TV B0x the main system I have in the
l0unge never gets fired up at all…….
n0mad
Ta
Thanks for the tips guys. Will look into them.
I was thinkin of getting something such as this
http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/products/home_entertainment/freeagent_t...
or connecting up the tv to the new pc. Which is much better solution but the wireless logitech keyboard control system is too far from the pc to work!
WDTV
I’ve heard good things about the WDTV. Saw it in store the other week and got to play with it. Would be more than good enough for most, and great value for a few hundred. Dunno what the other brands media players are like.
.
@Robag: I like the look of those Vantec’s. Will probably pick one of those up. The SATA one you have, does it auto spin down when it’s not in use?
@n0mad: I need a few of these, will probably try out one of the WD externals as well. Have you got the 1TB version? 4×250gb 2.5”?
Fuzz.
nope
no spin down
but it think you can use the windows power saving features to have it go to sleep
ta
Robag
.
Thanks. Lt – what do you think the chances of being able to send the vantec a sata sleep command from linux. Robag says there’s no auto spin down, but windows can spin it down with power savings.
Should be fine
If it responds to Windows power management, it is almost certain it responds to a SATA sleep command. As XBMC Live is rather stripped down, there’s not much in the way of configurable power management — but I’ll send you a basic script you can run every X minutes that will check if the disk has been accessed and spin it down if not, which is the only power management I’ve needed.
1TB
WDTV supp0rts 1tb External
just be aware that sum 0nly supp0rt 500gb external drives
Als0 f0r the cash WDTV is very cheap and has regular firmware updates t0 supp0rt new c0decs
1TB WD external drive is as l0w as $99.00 d0wn here…..
n0mad
.
Great thanks Lt, much appreciated.
Re media players – WDTV / Seagate media player / ION PC – I reckon those WDTV’s are great if that’s what you’re after. I’ll probably pick one up as a media player for the second TV. Reason I ruled that type of simple player out for the main TV was it wouldn’t be able to play some of the NBA games I download that are saved as .flv (ripped off NBA’s streaming service). That and I’d have to unplug the hard drive from wdtv, take it to the pc, copy the files on, unplug and take back again etc. The newer WDTV fixes that apparently with an ethernet jack, but wouldn’t do the .flv files. I like the flexibility a whole PC gives you. Comes at a premium though.
Fuzz.
Sh0utcast
kn0w what ya mean….
I live 4 sh0utcast radi0 stati0ns
and the ability t0 surf the net when needed.
The WII surfing the net suX
n0mad
Yeah exactly. Keeps your
Yeah exactly. Keeps your options open.
LAZY SONOVA
“That and I’d have to unplug the hard drive from wdtv, take it to the pc, copy the files on, unplug and take back again etc.”
thats what i thought was good… you can swap “lunch box” hard drives with your friends!
but yeah Gay with the .flv! that why i’d rather get the PC/TV link workin
Laptop
@Shad – It’s a shame your laptop completely carked it. An easy solution would have been to just move that next to the TV now it’s not your main PC.
WDTV V2
The new WDTV V2 has Wireless and Wired Netw0rk C0nnection as well…
“network through a wired connection or via popular, supported WiFi adapters (sold separately).”
Inf0 Here
n0mad
.
Oops, had a big long reply to that written up and somehow closed the tab. Basically, thanks yeah I’d heard about the WDTV + network port. Solves half of the problems I had with WDTV1. The .flv, plus other non standard use cases still an problem so still going with a media center PC.
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