Nice Bus-Powered External Hard Drive Enclosures

"Can anyone recommend any nice bus-powered external hard drive enclosures? I will supply my own hard drive."

Just a word of warning…

Whether a "bus-powered" enclosure can handle a given drive (that is to say, get it spinning and mounted on the desktop) is as much a factor of the drive as it is of the enclosure.

An enclosure that may work with bus power for one drive, may NOT work with a different drive.

In such cases, you may need either:
1. A "Y-cable" to connect to two ports on the Mac to "boost" the bus power to a level sufficient to get the drive spinning and mounted, or
2. An external power source (i.e., power block) and connecting cable.

Just be aware of such things before you buy….

I got this one http://www.amazon.com/Mediasonic-HD...0170445&sr=8-10&keywords=mediasonic+enclosure for pretty cheap. It is an aluminum enclosure with a plastic end cap where the USB 3.0 plug is. Its worked great for me so far. You are probably going to have to spend more on a drive if you want it to match the mac styling. Depending on the price it may be cheaper to buy the OWC drive with a HDD already installed because the standalone enclosures are fairly expensive. To my knowledge OWC drives are legitimate.

If you have Thunderbolt on your Mac, how about the Akitio Neutrino Thunderbolt Edition? It's the fastest bus-powered 2.5" hard drive (enclosure) known to mankind.

Giuly said:

If you have Thunderbolt on your Mac, how about the Akitio Neutrino Thunderbolt Edition? It's the fastest bus-powered 2.5" hard drive (enclosure) known to mankind.

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Correction: "...known to mankind" should be "...known to Giuly!"

LaCie's Rugged is $199, 120GB SSD, and has both Thunderbolt and USB 3.0 interface. See: http://www.lacie.com/us/products/product.htm?id=10599

g4cube said:

Correction: "...known to mankind" should be "...known to Giuly!"

LaCie's Rugged is $199, 120GB SSD, and has both Thunderbolt and USB 3.0 interface. See: http://www.lacie.com/us/products/product.htm?id=10599

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The LaCie Rugged disk has an internal SATA 3GBit/s connection, the Akitio is the only one with a SATA 6GBit/s chipset - according to Intel's list of certified Thunderbolt devices. And as USB 3.0 tops out at 5GBit/s, the Akitio is the fastest bus-powered 2.5" enclosure in existence.

Giuly said:

The LaCie Rugged disk has an internal SATA 3GBit/s connection, the Akitio is the only one with a SATA 6GBit/s chipset - according to Intel's list of certified Thunderbolt devices. And as USB 3.0 tops out at 5GBit/s, the Akitio is the fastest bus-powered 2.5" enclosure in existence.

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Incorrect.

The current SSD version has 6Gbit connection. See specs at lacie.com:

http://www.lacie.com/us/products/product.htm?id=10599

Best to check facts before making counter claims.

Also, there is quite a bit of difference when looking at simply the interface speeds. See other reports here regarding benchmark performance of various SSD configurations.

You are partially correct:
USB 3.0 is 5Gbps
SATA III is 6Gbps
Thunderbolt is dual 10Gbps

LaCie said:

Shocking speeds up to 385MB/s (SSD)

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Akitio said:

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Jeantro said:

the third lacie rugged thunderbolt 128 SSD

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Maybe that's the internal SSDs fault, though. But if you've seen benchmarks with an upgraded SSD in the Rugged disk, let me know.

Post the Akitio using the Black Magic Design benchmark?

Anecdotal - Akitio Neutrino Thunderbolt SSD 512GB

g4cube said:

Post the Akitio using the Black Magic Design benchmark?

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My company bought me of these. It worked intermittently from the start and now (2 months) fails to mount altogether. I'm going through the support process to get a replacement.

Note: we bought 4 of these at the same time. So we have a 25% failure rate.

YMMV but I'm unhappy.

cazzette said:

Hi all,

Can anyone recommend any nice bus-powered external hard drive enclosures? I will supply my own hard drive. It needs to support USB 3.0. Having Firewire is a plus but not necessary. I'd love to get a clean aluminum enclosure. I don't mind paying a little bit more for a quality/solid enclosure.

Thanks!

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The Oyen MiniPro seems to work pretty well for me on USB 3.0 (has ASMedia 1053e controller with UASP):

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003VKTJGW/ref=wms_ohs_product?ie=UTF8&psc=1

You can get it in several configurations:

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_s...digital+mini+pro&sprefix=oyen,electronics,245

I also like the LaCie "Rugged" with both Thunderbolt and USB 3.0 ... and it boots Windows on a Mac.

I picked up one of these $22 StarTech.com 2.5-Inch USB 3.0 External SATA III SSD Hard Drive Enclosure with UASP based on recommendations here a couple months ago. I put an SSD into it and even my most power challenged devices can easily power it and its blazing fast. Important to look for UASP in an enclosure.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00DFVZOAC/ref=pe_385040_30332190_TE_M3T1_ST1_dp_1

Not aluminum but is inconspicuous and has a solid quality feel.

Wait, this thread is over a year old....