Need a High Quality external enclosure for a HDD

[Poppa_Meth]

I'm setting up a backup system on a computer at work. It's a Dell Optiplex desktop style case so there is no room internally for another HDD. I'm getting a Seagate drive but I'm having trouble finding a good enclosure to put it in. I'm looking for something that is cool, quite, and reliable (I've had Bytecs corrupt too many drives) and I'd prefer it to have it's own power button. I found one I liked very much but of course no power button on it. Any input is appreciated.

[edDV]

As a consumer product, the Western Digital USB2 backup drives have worked well for me and include a dumbed down version of Dantz Retrospect 6.x.

Othewise for bare enclosures, look at the user reviews on Newegg.com.

[Denvers Dawgs]

Here is a KINGWIN enclosure w/USB 2.0

This one is an AMS VENUS with USB2.0 holds upto 400GB HDD.

[Skith]

The AMS VENUS series is very good, the 3.5" enclosures use an 80mm fan for air circulation, it is wisper quiet (I have one) and it keeps the drive cooler than any other enclosure I have tried (the drive remains warm to the touch, while other enclosure caused the drive to heat up to the point where it was uncomfortable/to hot to touch). The drive used is an IDE 160GB WD SE drive.

The USB 2.0 version of the AMS Venus 3.5"

The USB 2.0/FireWire Combo AMS Vensus 3.5"

I own the combo version, and use the firewire connection.

[Poppa_Meth]

I'm not too fond of the prefab drives like the Maxtor, Seagate or WD externals. They all seems to get crappy reviews more often than I care for. I've been reading reviews on Newegg and Amazon as well as other places and there is so much conflicting opinion on them. I also notice warranty is usually much lower of the retail externals. Seagate for example has a 5 year warranty on a normal internal IDE drive but their external model has only a 1 year warranty. I'd rather get the better warranty and my own enclosure. I'll take a closer look at those AMS enclosures. I was also looking at a McAlly which had very good reviews, but it seems to lack the power switch.

Thanks for the input.

[Denvers Dawgs]

I have a McAlly enclosure it stays cool, and is pretty quiet

[edDV]

Just be aware a drive in an external USB2 enclosure will run less than a third transfer speed and with moderate CPU activity vs. the same drive on an internal PATA or SATA controller.

[Poppa_Meth]

Like I said, I have no room in an Optiplex Desktop chassis for another drive. So external is the only option. It'll only be used once a week anyway for Ghost backups. The rest of the time it'll remain off.

[piano632]

Firewire is faster than USB2 in the real world, so you may want to look for a FW enclosure or a combo unit. I don't find that FW transfer speed is that much slower than an internal drive, but USB2 does slow things down some.

The best chipsets are Oxford for FW; Cypress for USB2.

[Poppa_Meth]

Unfortunately the PC has no FW connection and no room to add a card once the wireless adapter is installed. I hate having such a small case to work with. It's setting some major limits on what I can do.