Hard Drive Enclosures: well built and reasonably priced?

[Piyono]

Over the years I've used a variety of external hard-drive enclosures and while they do, for the most part, work as advertised, I have yet to find a model priced under $50 (nevermind under $100) that has all (if any of) the features I want. My dream enclosure would be thusly spec'ed:

• Solid, simple construction of Aluminium alloy or high-density polymer (like a pelican case)
• Flat outer sides, balanced for easy vertical or horizontal placement without need for a separate stand
• Decoupled/shock mounted drive harness
• Tool-less entry and drive installation/removal, captive thumbscrews or cam locking mechanisms.
• Internal, multi-voltage power supply with standard IEC jack
• Front panel power switch; solid and 'oops'-proof
• Rack-mountable (i.e. 1.75" tall)
• Data connectors fastened mechanically to chasis
• Does not have to be (probably shouldn't be) watertight or airtight
• Does not have to significantly reduce dB SPL
• Costs WELL under CAN$100. Preferably under CAN$50 (I can buy an Antec case for $100 with a power supply, for cryin' out loud!)

The big idea is to have a drive that can withstand the rigors of regular transport and light abuse as might be encountered in a portable audio or video recording rig or the backpack of a traveling computer technician. A company called Glyph specializes in pre-configured external drives for the AV market. They make what is reputed to be an excellent product with support services like overnight advance RMA and so on.
Drives like this incorporate some of the points in my list, but for a do-it-yourself kind of guy who is perfectly happy to RMA his own damn drive, $300 for a 250GB that I'm (probably) not allowed to open is a veritable slap in the face.

Perhaps one or two of you, in your travels, have come across a product that approaches what I've described.
The frustration builds. I know I'm not the only person who wants one of these things. And if nobody else is making 'em I think I may have to bring the damn things to market myself.


Piyono

 

[Piyono]

Nobody?

OK, well let's start easy: what's your favorite enclosure with a built-in power supply and a reliable bridge chipset?

Piyono

 

[Piyono]

Nobody?

OK, well let's start easy: what's your favorite enclosure with a built-in power supply and a reliable bridge chipset?

Piyono


p.s. Oh yes, I have to add one more item to the bulleted list above:
• Stackable, in a mating-grooves kind of way.

p.p.s Don't know how I managed to double-post. Sorry.

 

[Mercutio]

Seriously, I've never had a drive enclosure do anything but piss me off.

Either there's a fan that breaks after roughly 42 seconds of operation, or the drive gets too hot and dies on its own.

 

[P5-133XL]

Seriously, I've never had a drive enclosure do anything but piss me off.

Either there's a fan that breaks after roughly 42 seconds of operation, or the drive gets too hot and dies on its own.

Or the fan lasts forever, keeps the drive cool, but is so noisey, that you wish it would die.

 

[Mercutio]

Yes. Or that.

 

[Handruin]

I have a passively cooled vantec case that's fine (with external power supply)...makes little to no noise and the drive is still alive.

 

[Mercutio]

Haven't had it long, have you?

ddrueding sent me some all-aluminum SATA to USB enclosures with 750GB drives in them. I let one drive run inside that enclosure for about two and a half days and it died. When I took the drive out, I had to handle it with an oven mitt.

 

[Handruin]

I'm also using a samsung drive...runs cool and quiet. The case isn't cluttered around other things, it sits on the desk with no fan.

 

[ddrueding]

If I ever need USB drives again, I'll either get more of these or use these along with these. I just don't trust the fan-less aftermarket cases to keep the drives cool enough, and I don't trust the fans to survive or be quiet enough.

 

[Piyono]

Well, I'm glad I'm not the only one around who's can claim gray hair increase as a result of using these things.

I'm completely serious about designing a proper enclosure and bringing it to market. I'm no engineer but I know how something should work. Anyone here with a mechanical engineering background care to start swapping ideas?

Piyono

 

[Handruin]

I don't, but would love to help some how. Your case idea does sound grand and I'd probably buy one if it existed. I'd need eSATA added though...

 

[ddrueding]

Wouldn't eSATA essentially be a pass-through?

 

[Handruin]

Sorta, but it does have a controller chip to work out the logic with USB since it has both...

 

[ddrueding]

I think a straight eSATA enclosure, and a separate eSATA-USB adapter would make more sense.

If eSATA is available, it would be the obvious choice, and is the cheapest to produce. For those who need USB instead, a basic adapter could do the trick.

 

[Piyono]

As far as bridge chips go, Glyph's GT050Q uses the Oxford OXUF924DSb, which supports Firewire 400, Firewire 800 and USB 2.0. It's a dual-SATA design, configurable as dual-drive (RAID 0/1, JBOD) or single drive with eSATA passthrough. I trust Handruin likes the sound of that.
Let's hear it for single-chip solutions!

Most of the cheap enclosures I've encountered use a Prolific chipset. I guess on a whole they're a lot cheaper than anything made by Oxford. I'm actually curious about the spread so I'm gonna see what kind of price difference we're talking about.

Will report back.

Piyono

 

[Sol]

I also use a Vantec fanless aluminum enclosure (Also with a Samsung drive), it's my second (My first is in Australia). The drive in the first one eventually died (well a bit, a couple of errors) after being taken to work in a backpack for the best part of a year. Well that and it wasn't exactly new when I put it in the case (I think it was a 120GB drive from back when that was big).

If you want something that will stand up to transport then you'll probably need at least a notebook drive or idealy something solid state. If your carrying non-critical, always backed up data and don't mind replacing your drive every year or so then I can recommend the Nexstar enclosures with a Samsung drive as a dead-easy, good quality option.

 

[Piyono]

It's interesting you mention that, Sol, as I had been thinking about the durability difference of 2.5" v.s. 3.5" drives, and whether a 2.5" would fare better in a backpack than a 3.5". Probably would, right?

But backpacking isn't really what I have in mind. I don't know anyone who casually carries around 250+ Gigabytes of data on a hard drive. Thumb-sized memory sticks are far more convenient for day-to-day storage and transport.

The applications I envision are semi-permanent installations which require high-capacity, high-speed storage in a reliable package. Any number of on-site data gathering or backup applications could benefit from a reliable external hard drive. Closest to my heart is a portable audio rig for location recording or a fixed external drive for studio work. 3.5" drives have the throughput and capacity to handle this chore without hiccups.

That said, I'm sure 2.5" drives would perform quite nicely in applications which require lower track counts. Two or three drives could easily be configured into a portable array, as well.

Just to clarify, when I mention shock mounting, I'm not talking about strapping the drive to a jackhammer. No hard drive in the world could survive a constant barrage of shaking, jostling and bumping. The shock-mounting I have in mind would be effective against the softer bumps and blows that a drive might endure just in the course of being handled in a delicate manner by a conscientious user, not someone who needs to redefine the limits of hardware abuse.

Of course, a solid-state drive would kick ass but flash memory isn't quite there yet and holographic and organic storage are a ways off...

Gotta make the best of what we've got.


Piyono

 

[ddrueding]

I agree that solid-state isn't there yet, but I think it's pretty darn close. So close that I would hesitate to design a product that it would practically invalidate.

For the uses where solid state is still a ways off (250GB+?) I would still consider 2.5" drives. Even a pair of them are smaller and draw less power than a single 3.5", and have all that laptop-like tech to them (shock protection, quieter, lower power consumption, etc.)

 

[Mercutio]

There's a 400GB SATA drive in my laptop bag most of the time. That's pretty casual.

 

[Piyono]

There's a 400GB SATA drive in my laptop bag most of the time. That's pretty casual.

Stop me if I'm way off on this, Merc— compared to the rest of the world's computer-using population — even the enthusiast crowd — there is very little about your relationship to computers that could be considered casual by any stretch of the imagination.

[soft chuckle]


Piyono

 

[Buck]

I'm looking for an external enclosure that will house a DVD/Blue-Ray SATA optical drive. Any suggestions?

 

[Onomatopoeic]

The highest quality external drive cases that I've ever encountered have been those made by CI Design. These are quality all-metal designs with excellent internal power supplies and cooling.

http://www.cidesign.com/product_detail.jsp?productID=35

 

[Piyono]

The highest quality external drive cases that I've ever encountered have been those made by CI Design. These are quality all-metal designs with excellent internal power supplies and cooling.
http://www.cidesign.com/product_detail.jsp?productID=35

They don't seem to make USB or Firewire enclosures— only SCSI.

Piyono

 

[Mercutio]

If you ever find someone who can fabricate external enclosures, send him to me when you're done. I'd love to work out a perfect computer chassis.

 

[Fushigi]

Rugged but expensive: https://www.olixir.com/products_3dx.php

Probably less rugged but not nearly so pricey: http://www.addonics.com/products/turnkey/dcs/sdcs.asp

Looks like a reasonable compromise: http://www.radtech.us/Products/Impact35Standard.aspx

 

[Piyono]

See, those aren't *bad* but none of them meet *my* criteria. For starters, None of them have an internal power supply. None of them have a front-panel power switch. Only one of them is available as chassis-only. Only one of them is reasonably priced. Olixir actually lists as a *feature* one point that I list as a *drawback*. I could sit here and deconstruct each manufacturer's offerings but there are better things to do with my time.

One the bright side, I do rather like the backplane connector idea shared by Olixir and Addonics, although not so much that I'd put it on my list of specs. From what I can see of Radtech's shockmount system I think it's a good idea, but it's not how I'd implement such a feature.

All that said, I think I'll look for a Radtech supplier in Toronto.



Piyono

 

[Will Rickards]

I understand the requirement for the internal supply. It would be convenient.
I have one with an internal one. But it adds considerable heat.

 

[ddrueding]

I have one with an internal one. But it adds considerable heat.

...and weight, and is less convenient if you are going to be swapping out drives and leaving the cables (for backup, etc)

 

[Santilli]

I use these:

http://www.granitedigital.com/catalog/pg51_hot-swapinternalsystem.htm

have to have the dock in the computer you are going to.

Uses a nice caddy, and, a foam enclosure.

I'd look at GD's external solutions, but, frankly, Costco is the way to go. If it fails, unconditional return. Plus, they seem to actually shop carefully for value, prior to making very large buys.

These look pretty good, as well...

http://www.granitedigital.com/catalog/pg48_portabledrivesystems.htm

S

PS
This seems expensive, but, perhaps useful?

http://www.granitedigital.com/catalog/pg43_diskjocky.htm

 

[Mercutio]

You might want to look into Costco's return policy. I know they made it a lot less unconditional on January 1st of this year.

 

[Santilli]

IIRC, on cameras, and TV's, they reduced the return policy, and a few other items where people were buying, then returning, and rebuying, as prices dropped. Don't think it went to computer parts, but, it's well worth checking.

On the other hand, I'm unlikely to go for anything but Seagate drives, 5 year warranty, or Samsung, and, just use the removeable drive system for my major uses.

Moving stuff around right now, and, it does take hours, regardless of the housing...

S

 

[Piyono]

To power supplies generating more heat and adding more weight, I say: "so?".

Heat: Hard drives are designed to run at elevated temperatures. I'm sure we've all at some point touched a running hard drive inside a computer case and been shocked at how it was, despite its operating normally. I don't know if it's been posted here before, but Google released some internal data that are quite telling.

Weight: On an external-PS drive you're still lugging around a power supply and its associated mass, except now it's a separate piece requiring more setup time, creating more clutter and introducing more cables (read: points of failure). If you're often running around with a hard drive in a set-it-up / tear-it-down sort of scenario, the benefits of having a built-in power supply — in my eyes, anyway — *far* outweigh any conceivable drawbacks.

Interesting article from Google, huh?


Piyono

 

[timwhit]

That article has been posted here before. I am just too lazy to dig up the old post. The built-search is too hard to use effectively.

 

[timwhit]

Only took about 9 searches to find it.

 

[Piyono]

Feel free to continue to post your favourite hard drive enclosure links.

Piyono

 

[Will Rickards]

Review by anandtech of an esata enclosure.
http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3033&p=8

 

[Piyono]

Thanks, will, I caught that one, too.

Piyono

 

[Piyono]

Some companies are selling bridge chips with ports assembled into a bracket.

Great for building your own enclosure, except that the price on these things is around US$70. That doesn't include a chasis or power supply. Sucky.


Piyono

 

[Will Rickards]

Is this icydock closer to what you want? It looked pretty good to me.
http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3119&p=1

I have to implement a backup system for someone and was thinking internal drive bay. But maybe I'll use one of these.