USB Drive Enclosure Recommendations?

[haravikk]

Okay, I've recently re-discovered the 250gb drive that came with my Mac Pro, which I immediately switched out for four 750gb ones. Anyway, I now have need of a new external drive, so my thinking was to simply get a drive-enclosure rather than a whole new external drive. My need isn't urgent, but it's one of those things I really like to have and do find useful from time-to-time, though this may change.

My requirements are:

• Supports 3.5" form-factor, SATA-300 drives, as that's what I've got.
• Is boot-able, as I'd like to use it as an emergency drive, and possibly install Windows to it, though I may change my mind on that as the procedure looks fairly complicated. I read somewhere that whether a computer can boot from it or not may depend on a chip in the enclosure but I'm unsure how to find out about that.
• USB 2.0, as while it's not a compact drive I'd like it to be portable. Additionally on this front, being bus-powered would be great, but not an absolute requirement (I'm not incapable of carrying a power-adaptor =)

Just hoping to get any recommendations from people that have bought USB enclosures recently, or otherwise know of some good ones to investigate!

Thanks, and Merry Christmas, may not have a chance to check back on this thread till after the 25th

 

[iBookG4user]

Okay, I've recently re-discovered the 250gb drive that came with my Mac Pro, which I immediately switched out for four 750gb ones. Anyway, I now have need of a new external drive, so my thinking was to simply get a drive-enclosure rather than a whole new external drive. My need isn't urgent, but it's one of those things I really like to have and do find useful from time-to-time, though this may change.

My requirements are:

• Supports 3.5" form-factor, SATA-300 drives, as that's what I've got.
• Is boot-able, as I'd like to use it as an emergency drive, and possibly install Windows to it, though I may change my mind on that as the procedure looks fairly complicated. I read somewhere that whether a computer can boot from it or not may depend on a chip in the enclosure but I'm unsure how to find out about that.
• USB 2.0, as while it's not a compact drive I'd like it to be portable. Additionally on this front, being bus-powered would be great, but not an absolute requirement (I'm not incapable of carrying a power-adaptor =)

Just hoping to get any recommendations from people that have bought USB enclosures recently, or otherwise know of some good ones to investigate!

Thanks, and Merry Christmas, may not have a chance to check back on this thread till after the 25th

I've never seen a bus-powered 3.5" external hard drive, so you're probably not going to be able to get that. FireWire would be better than USB, so best to get both rather than limit yourself to USB. Other than that, I was recently in a similar position in needing just an enclosure and I went with this one. So far the enclosure has been great and I haven't found any problems with it, the price was great relative to the other enclosures and it has USB, FireWire, and eSata.

 

[haravikk]

FireWire would be better than USB.

Well on the portability front I think USB is generally the best bet as few of the machines in my university labs have firewire, only a couple of my friends have computers with it as well. Plus if I get a Mac laptop in future and they still haven't found a way to squeeze firewire back in then unfortunately it's the more realistic for now I think. Plus as I say I'd like to attempt a Windows install onto it so I can boot into Windows for things that Parallels/VMWare don't support properly yet (games mostly), getting Windows to boot from a Firewire drive sounds like it has loads of issues, well, more than USB at least. I certainly won't begrudge an enclosure that supplies more than just USB, but USB is definitely a requirement.

Other than that, I was recently in a similar position in needing just an enclosure and I went with this one. So far the enclosure has been great and I haven't found any problems with it, the price was great relative to the other enclosures and it has USB, FireWire, and eSata.

Oooh, will certainly check that out! I've seen external drives with those cases, or maybe similar ones, didn't realise their was an enclosure version available to buy separately! Thanks!