External Case for factory drive

[whdigital]

I'm looking for recommendations on external cases for the SATA drives. Any favorites? I don't need portability per se. Maybe even a something that can be configured as a NAS??

Let me explain my fun day ahead...

A couple of weeks ago I ordered a 15" (late 2011) Refurbished from Apple with everything I wanted except the internal drive is the 5400 750G. It's ready for pick-up at the store today -actually has been for several days and I have to get it now.

Before anyone chimes in with "wait for WWDC" let me just say I'm not seeing enough evidence of a new model coming. Apple's secrecy isn't usually THIS good this close to an event, but even if so - unless they keep eNET and SuperDrive on board, I don't want one. End of discussion for me. If the there is a new one and it's all I want and more, then I'll return this one as I'll be within the 14 days.

So, I also have landing today 16GB of Crucial RAM and a Seagate Momentus XT Hybrid 750G. I want a faster drive, but can't give up space for an affordable SSD. The question is what to do with the factory drive? Size would be perfect for a Time Capsule backup or whatever. Just not sure about cases. They seem like there are so many of them. Any in particular to avoid at least?

Thanks in advance...

 

[CarcinogenX]

I bought an SSD and got this for my original drive. FireWire 800, sturdy construction and is powered only by the cable. It's soooo much faster than USB 2

Macally PHR-S250UAB

 

[whdigital]

That looks great! Thanks for the suggestion...

 

[Spikeuk76]

I did what a lot of others have done, put an SSD in the main drive bay and moved the drive that come with the MBP into the optibay space. Ive put the superdrive in an external case but not used it once since ive got the machine.

This configuration gives me 1TB of internal storage which is plenty for my needs

 

[whdigital]

Certainly a good suggestion Spikeuk76, but if you read through my original post you'll see that I'm a stickler for wanting the SuperDrive on-board. It has to to do with the kind of work I do and where I do it.

I would love a 512GB SSD, but the price it too high for me right now. I'm hoping the Hybrid will give me a decent trade-off with good "bang for the buck" on the purchase.

 

[whdigital]

Curious if anyone has tried one of these with the new MBPs that support USB 3.0. Looks like a nice enclosure, albeit a bit more $

 

[SDAVE]

I got this. It's a beauty. I use FW800 and work between different macs. Get around 75MB/sec read/write. I'm sure USB3.0 will be a bit faster, but I don't have any USB3.0 devices to test it on.

The logo was kind of ugly, but i rubbed it with rubbing alcohol and it went away.

You can get the cheaper version that just has USB 3.0. It comes only in black, though.

Also if you get an SSD in this little enclosure, you should get SATAIII speeds (or close to) since USB 3.0 supports upto 5Gbps (SATAIII is 6Gbps).

And I know you don't care about portability, but these things are super tiny and self powered and they look good next to a Mac

If you're just gonna use it for a TimeMachine backup or whatever, just get a cheap-o $15 USB 2.0 case and you'll be fine. That's what I did with an older 2.5" drive I had, I use it for Time Machine. This other one I use from my internal drive that I replaced with an SSD, I use the above enclosure I linked you to.

----------

I bought an SSD and got this for my original drive. FireWire 800, sturdy construction and is powered only by the cable. It's soooo much faster than USB 2

Macally PHR-S250UAB

That's a horrible looking case. I know Macally makes a better case than this, but I'm surprised they make this one. It looks like a case from 2003. Ugly type on it to boot.

 

[whdigital]

I got this. It's a beauty. I use FW800 and work between different macs. Get around 75MB/sec read/write. I'm sure USB3.0 will be a bit faster, but I don't have any USB3.0 devices to test it on.

Funny... that's the one I meant to link to in my post and submitted without doing it!

I do care about speed for more than Time Machine as I was hoping to pull my internal 7200rpm out of 2012 cMPB and use it as a scratch disk for FinalCut Pro. Given that I do want portability so I'm pleased it's BUS powered...

 

[SDAVE]

Funny... that's the one I meant to link to in my post and submitted without doing it!

I do care about speed for more than Time Machine as I was hoping to pull my internal 7200rpm out of 2012 cMPB and use it as a scratch disk for FinalCut Pro. Given that I do want portability so I'm pleased it's BUS powered...

Good to see we're looking at the same thing

I think external is the way to go. You might need the SuperDrive and you might want to use this drive to transfer mass amounts of data between computers. I mean you can do the latter with any external drive, but it's nice to have 1 "working" drive.