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3.5 portable External Hard Drive Enclosure Options

i4k20c

i4k20c

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Sep 10, 2005
878
129
Does anyone know of any good portable 3.5 USB 3.0 external gtad) hard drive enclosures without a need for a power supply?

I had a old one that was firewire 800 but since the new macs don't support that, I wanted to transport the drive into a new enclosure.

I'm having a tough time finding one.
 
h9826790 said:
Will you consider to use TB - FW800 adaptor?
Click to expand...
I could, but truth be told, I kind of destroyed the segate fw 800 enclosure. Assuming, you are talking about the apple adapter for $40, I'm sort of feeling like I would just be better off getting a 1tb USB 3.0 Seagate expansion HD for $55. =/

I was hoping for a cheap enclosure since it would only cost around $15 or so I was assuming. Though that might only be the price for 2.5 portable enclosures.
 
i4k20c said:
Does anyone know of any good portable 3.5 USB 3.0 external gtad) hard drive enclosures without a need for a power supply?

I had a old one that was firewire 800 but since the new macs don't support that, I wanted to transport the drive into a new enclosure.

I'm having a tough time finding one.
Click to expand...

It would be cheaper to just buy a new portable 2.5 inch external hard drive... I've never driven a 3.5 inch hard drive off Firewire alone... all the enclosures I've ever seen for 3.5" hard drives have required an external power supply.
 
matreya said:
It would be cheaper to just buy a new portable 2.5 inch external hard drive... I've never driven a 3.5 inch hard drive off Firewire alone... all the enclosures I've ever seen for 3.5" hard drives have required an external power supply.
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Weird, maybe this was a unique hard drive then. For reference, it was the Seagate goflex 1tb with firewire 800.

I actually thought it was a 2.5 inch drive and purchased a external until I opened it up and realized it was bigger. Further research led me to believe it is a 3.5.

Simply plugging my case into the 2.5 inch enclosure, it's running fine off of the sata to USB 3.0 port (I left the top cover off) and of course it worked with the fw 800 as it originally came.
 
Given how old the hard drive is I hope you have backups.... IMHO it would be a good move to just buy a new portable hard drive... and migrate your data across to it...
 
matreya said:
Given how old the hard drive is I hope you have backups.... IMHO it would be a good move to just buy a new portable hard drive... and migrate your data across to it...
Click to expand...
You think it's too old to keep going?
 
i4k20c said:
You think it's too old to keep going?
Click to expand...

I think so... you can get a replacement hdd for what it would probably cost to find an enclosure. USB3.0 certainly doesn't have the power to drive a 3.5" drive. And a thunderbolt->firewire adaptor would cost you half the price of a new hdd anyway... and there's no guarantee it will work.
 
For a 3.5" drive to be driven off a bus that must be a very low draw drive. I doubt if the enclosure has anything to do with it. I would think any 3.5" FW enclosure would work. On the other hand, for $100 you could replace it with a new, faster usb3 external drive.
 
Ray2 said:
For a 3.5" drive to be driven off a bus that must be a very low draw drive. I doubt if the enclosure has anything to do with it. I would think any 3.5" FW enclosure would work. On the other hand, for $100 you could replace it with a new, faster usb3 external drive.
Click to expand...
I was reading on here that one of the sites sell refurbished lacie rugged Thunderbolt 1tb USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt for a $100. I need to find where that is, but I wonder if it's worth paying the extra few bucks for it.

There is definitely something odd about this drive. I left it to copy files overnight and in 7 hours, it has only transferred, 75 gigs via USB 3.0. I'm not sure if because before I was having it go into a true crypt file (since suspension of that encryption), I used a encrypted dmg container.

Previously, I would be able to transfer 10 gig files in 15 minutes or so on fw 800.
 
Last edited:
I could be wrong about this, but I don't think you're going to find ANY 3.5" enclosure that will run off "bus power".
They will ALL require an external power supply of some sort.

If you want to be able to run off bus power, you need a 2.5" drive in a small enclosure.

Most of these will run of bus power.
It's -possible- that some older platter-based drives will consume too much power to get up-and-running (i.e., platters spinning and drive mounted in the finder) on bus power alone.

Some 2.5" enclosures may require a "Y-cable".
This has one USB plug on "the drive enclosure end", and TWO USB plugs on the other (Mac) end. The "doubles up" the USB bus power and provides enough to get the drive running.

But a 3.5" drive?
Very doubtful...
 
Fishrrman said:
I could be wrong about this, but I don't think you're going to find ANY 3.5" enclosure that will run off "bus power".
They will ALL require an external power supply of some sort.

If you want to be able to run off bus power, you need a 2.5" drive in a small enclosure.

Most of these will run of bus power.
It's -possible- that some older platter-based drives will consume too much power to get up-and-running (i.e., platters spinning and drive mounted in the finder) on bus power alone.

Some 2.5" enclosures may require a "Y-cable".
This has one USB plug on "the drive enclosure end", and TWO USB plugs on the other (Mac) end. The "doubles up" the USB bus power and provides enough to get the drive running.

But a 3.5" drive?
Very doubtful...
Click to expand...
Yeah. I think I will just get a new hard drive, but I want to mention this hard drive is up and running. It's in a 2.5 sata to USB 3.0 and is working. I just can't close the case.

Here is model of the hard drive.

http://disctech.com/Seagate-FreePlay-ST1000LM010-1000GB-1TB-SATA-Hard-Drive

Oops, maybe I was wrong and it's not a 3.5? Though it doesn't fit in any 2.5 case I have, and is much bigger than the hard drive I pulled out of my macbook pro which leads me to believe it's not a 2.5.
 
matreya said:
Then it's definitely a 2.5" HDD, it's just very thick, 15mm thick vs the usual 7/9.5mm we have today....
Click to expand...
Oops. My bad. I'm sorry for the confusion. I didn't realize the size of hard drives went down!

Thanks for helping me everyone, it is much appreciated.
 
You can get 2.5" enclosures that will take a 15 mm drive. Just make sure they spell it out. Candidly, just spend a few bucks and replace both the drive and enclosure. I've now standardized on OWC Express enclosures ($20) and 2tb SpinPoints. 2 for travel and 2 for archiving to a safe deposit box. Been using the enclosures since they were introduced (usb2) as well as the 2tb SpinPoints since introduction. Excellent. I've also compared the Express enclosures to 2 costing over $100. No different performance, build quality lower but they've all survived at least 3 months of travel each year.
 
Something else to consider:

If you can't find a 2.5" enclosure that will accept the drive you have, you might consider a USB3/SATA "docking station" instead. It should fit easily into one of those.

ALL of them require ac power, however...
 
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