OT: Got lots of extra hard drives?

riredale wrote on 7/15/2006, 2:41 PM
I have extra hard drives that I house in those little plastic caddies, ready to pop into my PC if needed. Today I came across this product, which is even simpler and doesn't require PC shutdown. Keep in mind, however, that the hard drive is left unprotected, especially the circuit board on the bottom. Still, for $20 this might be something to get for special situations.

Comments

farss wrote on 7/15/2006, 3:16 PM
It's only USB, I have seen a firewire variant but I think they were more expensive.
eSATA seems a better way to go in the long term.

Bob.
Steve Mann wrote on 7/15/2006, 5:42 PM
I've got a couple of these for those 40-60Gb disk drives laying about when I need to save a project for a few months.

Steve M.
johnmeyer wrote on 7/15/2006, 6:30 PM
$20 is actually expensive. You can often get these for less than half that price. However, you can get ones with an enclosure and a fan for under $30, so I'm not sure it's worth it to horse around with something that leaves the drive exposed.
ArtStar wrote on 7/21/2006, 9:13 AM
However, you can get ones with an enclosure and a fan for under $30,

Where???
johnmeyer wrote on 7/21/2006, 2:25 PM
However, you can get ones with an enclosure and a fan for under $30,

They are available all the time. There is one from Meritline for $11 right now (sale started today), that has a fan. It is pretty cheap, but it works (I have purchased several). If you subscribe to dealnews.com, they will send you notices whenever one of these goes on sale.

Here's the link to that one:

http://dealnews.com/deals/Cintre-ZDisc-3-5-USB-2-0-Hard-Drive-Enclosure-for-11-after-rebate/126260.html

I actually prefer spending a little more money and getting this enclosure:

http://dealnews.com/deals/ADS-3-5-USB-2-0-Hard-Drive-Enclosure-for-18/125708.html

which is on sale now for $18 plus shipping. It is larger, and I like its construction and fan much better. In fact, now that you reminded me, I'm going to order one today.
Jay_Mitchell wrote on 7/21/2006, 2:51 PM
If you want reliability, performance and cooling in an external enclosure - I would suggest that you look at these two models from AMS.

AMS Venus DS-2316B2BK (USB) $39.99 Newegg.com
AMS Venus DS-2316CBK (USB + 1394a) $49.99 Newegg.com

I own a combo of more than 50 of these AMS enclosures and they work flawlessly.

Jay Mitchell
Steve Mann wrote on 7/21/2006, 11:51 PM
"so I'm not sure it's worth it to horse around with something that leaves the drive exposed."

I have a box of 20-60Gb drives that I've collected over the years. It takes a lot less space to store the bare drives and I rarely ever need to access the data on them. When a drive is likely to be in use for a project it goes into an external box.

Steve M.
kriz100 wrote on 7/22/2006, 7:43 AM
That's right! IDE2USB adapters (3,5 and 2,5), you'll already get for 5 euros on eBay...
murphy wrote on 7/22/2006, 10:18 AM
I'm also swapping out drives regularly and would like to find an enclosure with a fan that would allow me to swap drives around within the enclosure..
The connections inside the enclosures that I've used don't seem to be sturdy enough to stand up to continous changing of hard drives.
Ideally you should have one enclosure for each drive but has anyone found a USB 2 enclosure that would stand up to putting different drives in and out on a regular basis.