eSATA Enclosure Suggestions?

axan said:
antec mx-1, been using it for like a year, great enclosure
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817371008&Tpk=antec+mx-1
Click to expand...

QFT. Amazon had it for $17 after MIR recently, snatched one right up.

To give you an idea of how effective the MX-1's cooling system is, my Hitachi 7K400 idled @ about 37C and ran warm under load - about 47C, while inside a HDD cage with very little airflow from an undervolted 80mm fan. With the enclosure's fan on, drive idle temperature is 30C and load temperature is 33C. The fan is fairly quiet (a slight whirring noise) and helps mask the drive's high frequency whine. Seeks are very quiet; the drive itself is mounted on an Antec-designed silicone layer to help minimize vibration.
 
Well those sure are fancy. Are enclosures really $50? I thought $20 was overpriced for what amounts to a metal sleeve and a cable
 
The cheap enclosures are the ones that don't have fans. Personally, I prefer to having cooling, I don't trust passive cooling in a closed enclosure. I picked up a MX-1 on that Amazon rebate, I'm not totally impressed. It's a little larger than most enclosures, a little more of a pain in the ass to put together (unplugging tiny molex connectors?), and I find it noisier than a few other enclosures I've had. I do agree though that it seems to do the best cooling job of any of my enclosures, maybe that's why it's noisier. I wouldn't say the MX-1 is the enclosure to get if you see yourself swapping drives out of it.

I was quite happy with my first USB to SATA enclosure, an AMS Venus from Newegg. I'm thinking about trying their USB/eSATA version http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817332012

Though that says it only supports up to 750GB, though that might also be a case of that's what was the biggest drive when it first came out. The MX-1 official said it only did 750GB because that was the biggest when it came out, in some places you look you still find that info.
 
There's a Q&A section somewhere on AMS' site that states those enclosures will work with 1TB drives btw.

I've owned the AMS Venus DS3 version (SATA -> USB / eSATA) for over two years now, I've probably left the thing on about 80%+ of the time (I just forget to turn it off, even though I should), and it's still working as well as the day I bought it.

I think I paid $50 for it at the time and it still goes for about $40-45, seemed kinda high then and it's probably way high for an enclosure right now, but there were few SATA -> USB / eSATA options back then... Also, I did a fair bit of research into the actual USB controllers that go into these things when I bought it and some brands were a lot more prone/conflicts to problems than others..

I think the Oxford chip on this enclosure was one of the more reliable types (though I never confirmed if it was used for both USB and eSATA, there was little info on the eSATA bridge chips at the time).

In any case, it's quiet, it seems to disipate heat well, and it's lasted me over two years w/o a hiccup, can't really ask for more.
 
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