Macally hard drive cases & OWC Mercury cases, which has best ventilation

[Sossity]

I looked into these cases more & they both dont have fans, will the aluminum be enough to dissapate heat?

which of these cases offers the most ventilation? I see the mercury case has some space in it so the drive is not cramped in it. Does the macally have some space inside for the hard drive to breath?

 

[Makosuke]

Which particular cases are you talking about? OWC has about eight different lines of Mercury cases, some of which have good thermal conductivity, and some of which don't. Macally, likewise, has a variety of cases, made out of a variety of materials.

In general, though, a solid aluminum case (like the Mercury Elite-AL Pro; I use one similar to this at work) is probably fine for dissipating heat from a single hard drive, so long as it's not something extreme like a 7200RPM 3TB drive doing heavy data access, or a server that's going to be working the drive constantly all day. Plastic cases (like the Mercury Elite Pro Classic; I had a PATA one of these a while back, and wasn't terribly pleased with it), I tend to be a little more wary of; probably ok with a modern "green" drive, since those run very cool, but I wouldn't personally use one for anything past a backup drive.

 

[Sossity]

Which particular cases are you talking about? OWC has about eight different lines of Mercury cases, some of which have good thermal conductivity, and some of which don't. Macally, likewise, has a variety of cases, made out of a variety of materials.

In general, though, a solid aluminum case (like the Mercury Elite-AL Pro; I use one similar to this at work) is probably fine for dissipating heat from a single hard drive, so long as it's not something extreme like a 7200RPM 3TB drive doing heavy data access, or a server that's going to be working the drive constantly all day. Plastic cases (like the Mercury Elite Pro Classic; I had a PATA one of these a while back, and wasn't terribly pleased with it), I tend to be a little more wary of; probably ok with a modern "green" drive, since those run very cool, but I wouldn't personally use one for anything past a backup drive.

I have this; http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/1394/USB/EliteAL/eSATA_FW800_FW400_USB

& this one; http://www.macally.com/en/product/ipod4show.asp?ArticleID=255

the drives in these will be a 1TB hitachi deskstar 72rpm 32mb cache hard
drive

and a western digital black cavier 1TB 72rpm, 64 mb cache hard drive

I just read a review of the mercury elite & it discussed the power cord & claimed it had na external power supply that eliminated the need for a fan. I am not quite sure what this means, does it mean enclosures with inline power brick instead of at the plug in end will help with enclosures without fans?

 

[fineaddme]

i have both of those enclosures and i like the look of the macally but the owc seems quieter to me. but both have good ventilation

 

[Makosuke]

Ok, I have that exact Macally case on the desk in front of me at work with a previous-gen 1TB WD Green in it, and we've got one of the 2-drive versions of the Mercury Elite-AL Pro as well.

Both seem to have good ventilation, and the Macally case has good heat transfer as well, so I wouldn't feel uncomfortable about either unless you're going to be running the drive very hard, or very constantly. They'll both cool better convectively if you use the upright orientation, so it's probably worthwhile to do that.

I'm kind of curious, though: For a while, I was seeing the Macally drive occasionally hang completely, locking up all I/O on the Mac until you powered it off and back on (generating the "disk improperly disconnected" message, of course). Connected via FW400 to a PM G4 1000DP, then a previous-gen i7 iMac. It wasn't completely consistent, but seemed to happen about once a week (the computer is left on all the time and it does tri-weekly network backups to that external; no other access of it). The problem appeared to carry over to the iMac that replaced the old G4, but now it has apparently stopped--I haven't seen a hang in several weeks. Not sure if it was updating to 10.6.6 that did it, or if there was something else that changed.

Has anybody else seen this kind of behavior with that case?

 

[marshaul]

I'm kind of curious, though: For a while, I was seeing the Macally drive occasionally hang completely, locking up all I/O on the Mac until you powered it off and back on (generating the "disk improperly disconnected" message, of course). Connected via FW400 to a PM G4 1000DP, then a previous-gen i7 iMac. It wasn't completely consistent, but seemed to happen about once a week (the computer is left on all the time and it does tri-weekly network backups to that external; no other access of it). The problem appeared to carry over to the iMac that replaced the old G4, but now it has apparently stopped--I haven't seen a hang in several weeks. Not sure if it was updating to 10.6.6 that did it, or if there was something else that changed.

Has anybody else seen this kind of behavior with that case?

Are you sure it was the Macally enclosure which does this?

Reason I ask, lol, is that I have two of the OWC Mercury elite enclosures, and one of them does the exact same thing (the other is just fine, though).