OT: What is the Rolls Royce of hard drive enclosures?

NickHope wrote on 12/23/2004, 2:13 AM
After having trouble over the years with various IEEE 1394 hard drive enclosures (specifically Maxtor and Mapower), I would like to buy THE BEST. I don't mind if it costs double the average, or if it's big. I just want it to work properly for years.

I was thinking it might be ADS Pyro, but I've read a lot about people having trouble with them. And anyway, WHICH ADS Pyro enclosure? There are so many. Or should I go for something like Western Digital's or Sony's pre-assembled external hard drives?

Recommendations folks?

Comments

BillyBoy wrote on 12/23/2004, 6:40 AM
I too had nothing but trouble with Maxtor's. I mentioned in the forum I swore off any future enclosures...and I did...until I saw the new Seagate models. This isn't just a box, its a external drive in a box with its own external power source, runs either on firewire or USB and so far... works great, but I just use it for backup, so its mostly off and I don't use it for anything but backup.

If you want to use everyday I suggest you consider what I do. Regular drives enclosed in removabledrawers, I NEVER had a single drive problem and I got over a half dozen of these ranging from 250-300 GB
NickHope wrote on 12/23/2004, 7:15 AM
Thanks BillyBoy! What brand are your removable drawers (so to speak)? And can I buy an adaptor/enclosure for a removable drawer that will allow me to take the drive on the road with me and my laptop without having to screw the drive into a regular IEEE 1394 enclosure?
Paradox wrote on 12/23/2004, 7:15 AM
I would agree: consider drives in removable enclosures. Available at CompUSA at a reasonable price. I have had mixed luck with external enclosures. Now I use two for DVD's and they work okay. I'd hesitate to put a hard drive in them. I've had two go kaput.

BTW, BillyBoy, assuming you're using XP, have you found a procedure for hot-swapping the enclosures?

Thanx,
BigT
DCV wrote on 12/23/2004, 7:57 AM

For me, Wiebetech is my one-stop-shop for top of the line Firewire/USB2 enclosures. I have two Fire800s and a ToughTech I just picked up and they work great! Wiebetech has a wide variety of removables as well. They're definitely a little more expensive, but I've seen you get what you pay for.

www.wiebetech.com

John

riredale wrote on 12/23/2004, 8:26 AM
I've been very pleased with my ADS Pyro enclosure, even though it uses the chipset that limits drives to 137GB. I modified it slightly to hold a tray system, so now I have the best of both worlds--I can stockpile hard drives permanently mounted in their own trays, and I can slide one of those trays into the Pyro box and have it accessable in seconds. Neat.
NickHope wrote on 12/23/2004, 8:34 AM
That sounds like my kind of mod, riredale. Nice one!

The best solution for me sounds like it would be a tray system whereby the hard drive on it's tray would either slot into the bay on the front of my computer (so I can avoid my dreaded firewire) or slot into an external firewire box. If the system supported SATA drives then even better! Does anyone make such a set?
Liam_Vegas wrote on 12/23/2004, 9:27 AM
We had some good posts about the use of external drive enclosures with removable trays a couple of months ago.

Check out this and