External HD enclosures - from where and which one?

RicardoSmith

I want to get a n external USB2 drive enclosure. Anyone using one. I can't decide to get a full sixed one or a laptop one. I'd prefer the latter because its smaller and generally don't need a power lead (they get it from the USB) but I'd probablly find it slow. What do you think?

Nitrox

Get the Maxtor One touch, comes with 250 or 300 GB HD, now how is that for ya!!
Getting one this week, it is big, heavy and needs power, but 300 GIG, who cares

fatmander

I have both , get the large one

Most laptop hdd's run at 4,200 rpm, have a slower response time, less buffer etc,
not to mention expensive
IDE hdd's run at 7,200 and contain 2MB up to and beyond 8MB cache, better faster everything and a hell of a lot cheaper and in bigger sizes
The advantage of the full IDE USB2 case is that
1/ you dont need to turn off your computer to transfer files from one HDD- effectively turning IDE into a hot swop drive.
2/ you can buy an IDE to 2.5" cable converter that lets you use the larger case for the 2.5" size hard disk

Another advantage of the caddy is it works regardless of any your motherboards LBA limitations, so you could have a 300GB disk in the caddy, when you computer can only recognise drives less than 32GB
hth

Ryaner

The maxtor one touch drive is amazing. I have the 300Gb one which aint too heavy either but it's a great drive espec the back software

Col_Loki

Sorry to thread jack but is there any products out there that will let you addapt your existing HD to an external one?? I will prob have a spare 120gb HDisk and instead if throwing it into another PC it would great to have an external one.

Any idea's or can it be done?

Cheers, Loki

dazberry

Originally posted by COL_LOKI
Any idea's or can it be done?

Yes, you can buy seperate enclosures. I had a spare 20gb drive laying around so I brought one in Maplins for e65 before christmas. Possibly not the best one available, but it was the cheapest 3 1/2" model I found. They seem to retail on average for around e80.

The only problem I actually had was fitting the hd in, it was a sqeeze.

D.

Col_Loki

Cheers, i will probably go down that road alrite. Its USB2 yea?

Ryaner

Those usb2 exclosures can be quite expesive. I'd recommend getting a good one with a small fan as, espec with the big HD's you'll have heat problems. The good ones also allow for everything from CDroms to HDs to be put it as instead of just being for HDs they are a full 5.25 enclosure.

Col_Loki

Yea i was thinkin of getting the Maxtor 300gb one for a while there but its a little expensive. Even a cheap enclosue will do me, i will have an enclosure in my pc to swap it in and out easily so the USB one is really only for going and downloading information for a few hours, then the Harddrive would be back in the PC (probably) .

Would like to get the better one just probably wont have the use for it to warent the price u know ? Am already getting a new hard disk (prob GFX card toO) so funds are a bit of an issue.

Cheers for the advise guys,

Loki

RicardoSmith

Not all those enclosures support the larger drives so you have to watch out that.

The maxtor one touch drives are very expensive IMO.

One advantage the laptop drives have is that they are very portable. Theres also the fact that my main machine is a laptop. Though I have a desktop aswell I don't use that as much. But I think that I really need the extra space that a bigger drive gives you. The smaller drives are very expensive. So for the price of a 40gb laptop drive I'd have a least a 120gb drive or bigger.

Maplins do them and have a special on this weekend of one for about €70

Col_Loki

Yea ill prob pop into maplins on the way home on tuesday and hopefully its still on special..... would be nice!!

Cheers

Snaga

If they dont there are a couple of different ones available in peats around the corner, I picked one up before christmas for about 80 euros (had usb2 and firewire connectors).

Ryaner

I got the maxtor 300gb for pretty cheap. 340 on Komplett atm. Definite pricing error I'm thinking but go for it.

CombatCow

komplett have the external cases so you can slap wotever hdd you want in.

here- http://www.komplett.ie/k/kl.asp?AvdID=1&CatID=9&GrpID=9&t=1711&l=3
( open twice )
they have a usb2 3.5'' ide enclosure for E60
or usb2 and firewire for E94

CombatCow

raphaelS

Just a bit of warning, I have a laptop (Dell Inspiron 8000) and got a 2.5 enclosure when I changed the internal from a 10Go to 60Go.
It's a firewire only, powered by firewire if connected with a 6 pins/6 pins cable or powered by PS2 (cable was provided with pass-through for the mouse) when connected with a 6 pins/4 pins (i.e. on the laptop).

But the Dell doesn't give enough power to the PS2 to power the hard drive... I tried it with a Toshiba laptop and it works!

At the end I got a 160 Go Netdisk (http://www.ximeta.com/products/netdisk.html), a cheap network drive, it works well by Ethernet and USB.

Raphael

Ryaner

Originally posted by raphaelS
It's a firewire only, powered by firewire if connected with a 6 pins/6 pins cable or powered by PS2 (cable was provided with pass-through for the mouse) when connected with a 6 pins/4 pins (i.e. on the laptop).

Didnt know that you could actually power them completely off that. Most come with their own psu so that shouldnt be a problem for most

Ryaner

That netdisk looks sweet actually. Lan to HD without the router. It has it's own psu too so as you can see most dont have a problem with power.

raphaelS

Some 2.5 enclosure are powered by firewire or the USB port which make them really portable because you need only the enclosure and no external PSU...

Yes the Netdisk is nice...

Raphael

Col_Loki

komplett have the external cases so you can slap wotever hdd you want in.

Cheers Combatcow i forgot to look on komplett, thats gonna save me a trip to maplin and a few quid...... exactly what im lookin for!!

Ryaner

I warn everyone to stay away from maplins on computer hardware. Their stuff tends to be dodgy at best, the returns tend to be impossible. Very bad experiences and lots of money lost

RicardoSmith

Originally posted by Ryaner
I warn everyone to stay away from maplins on computer hardware. Their stuff tends to be dodgy at best, the returns tend to be impossible. Very bad experiences and lots of money lost

I've never had a problem with their returns. What problems did you have abd what do you mean by "dodgy at best". They sell a lot of known brands so I don't how that can be "dodgy". Do you mean shady deals or problematic hardware? Your being very vague.

RicardoSmith

Originally posted by raphaelS
Just a bit of warning, I have a laptop (Dell Inspiron 8000) and got a 2.5 enclosure when I changed the internal from a 10Go to 60Go.
It's a firewire only, powered by firewire if connected with a 6 pins/6 pins cable or powered by PS2 (cable was provided with pass-through for the mouse) when connected with a 6 pins/4 pins (i.e. on the laptop).

But the Dell doesn't give enough power to the PS2 to power the hard drive... I tried it with a Toshiba laptop and it works!

At the end I got a 160 Go Netdisk (http://www.ximeta.com/products/netdisk.html), a cheap network drive, it works well by Ethernet and USB.

Raphael

Some machines don't give enough power on the USB or FW or PS2. So you jsut have to check the spec on the ports of your machine. Those kinda disks generally also come with a PSU backup in case you have a problem you can just use that instead.

That Netdisk looks very handy.

Ebonyks

Give this crowd a look see

SUCCESS COMPU

They have HD cases and some other nice stuff. Not a great selection but their prices are pretty good. Have ordered off before and postage is around €12.

Ryaner

Originally posted by RicardoSmith
I've never had a problem with their returns. What problems did you have abd what do you mean by "dodgy at best". They sell a lot of known brands so I don't how that can be "dodgy". Do you mean shady deals or problematic hardware? Your being very vague.

I originally bought a mobo, cpu, ram and case off them. The first board had problems from the start.The first thing I had to do was buy a crap power supply to prove that wasnt the problem. (i had only started building my system at the time) The board eventually died on me and they then replaced it. By this time their computer tech had been fired over his mishaps I'm told. The next board was grand except that they messed up the ram somewhere along the line and it killed this board bios wise. I'm gonna try fix that someday soon but it currently dont even beep when it's turned on it that bad. I tried bringin the system over so they could look at and they wouldnt even turn it on because I had added some extra stuff. The differences where about two cases fans (mainly because the one they had given me when I originally got board replaced and bought more ram was the wrong size) and an audio card. The gfx card also had silent cooling on it but was the same card. I offered to take out the fans and sound card in shop and leave it with them and was told they would think about looking at it then but if they did it would be prob a few days before they'd be able do it properly.
All I wanted was for them to turn on the power supply and see the boards bios was gone because of the bad ram (which the new tech had tested and installed in the system)
Nuff said. I left it at that an went into peats and got me my current board. Once I got the bios setup the first time and the new ram installed aswell before booting all my problems went since all maplin's hardware is gone from the mix.

RicardoSmith

Thats just all too vague. Did you or they build the PC? Did the problems happen as soon as you built it, or as soon as you started modifying it? When the problems started why did you not just return the parts and get a refund if the parts were faulty. Once you have used and started modifying the PC you are leaving yourself open to the claim that what ever you did caused the problems. You should have clearly identified the problem first.

RicardoSmith

Originally posted by Ebonyks
Give this crowd a look see

SUCCESS COMPU

They have HD cases and some other nice stuff. Not a great selection but their prices are pretty good. Have ordered off before and postage is around €12.

Wow hong kong. You'd think there'd be something closer.

Ryaner

The shop in blanch is a bit away and everytime I went over for the first while they had no one who could look at the machine or would take it. I built it the first time. The northbridge on the first board was damaged. They identified that very quick once I told them exactly what to do. It ran at 100fsb so I used the machine. The wouldnt refund it and frankly I needed a working machine at the time so I wasnt too pushed to begin with. The second board, the ram was completely damaged. It was 100% before they rebuilt the machine with the new mobo. When the board died on me I tested the ram. One of the new dimms had 1%ok. I removed that but the board had alreadly lost too much of the bios and is now at it's current state.
Anyone know how to fix the board btw? I dont really wanna go hot flashing it but if it comes down to that i might have to.

RicardoSmith

In what way was the northbridge damaged?
What "exactly" did they have to do to see the problem?
Why would they not refund it?

How did you test that the ram was damaged?
What test tells you its 1% ok? and that the others are 100% not ok?
How did the board lose some of its bios?
What were you doing when the board died?
Could you not just flash it? Or had you already done that?

Ryaner

Firstly the northbridge, I'm not sure exactly how. All they had to do was but the board fsb above 100 and the whole system would die during the boot causing it to power off and then reboot. They wouldnt refund because I built it myself and it had been a month since I'd bought it. Having had the pc there few times and having been instructed to buy a psu and install it myself made no difference.

The ram testing was done by a memory testing program. The name is beyond me atm. It worked by basically booting into its on os as such I think and testing each section of the ram with different tests. Movements, writes, reads etc.

The boards bios started going because at the start I had enabled shadow bios. It loads the bios to the ram so it can run faster. The system suddenly dyin and rebooting caused this to happen. The cpu wasnt over heating (was running on full load at 45C) and the psu was a 550watt. I had flashed to bios but that went ok and was fully verified. I did that under instruction of the mobo's tech support. The board that I got of maplins was one of the versions which hadnt got the correct bios as temps volltages were all way off in it. The tech support advised me that flashing it would sort out the problems and make the system more stable which is did. The system had been randomly rebooting before the flash and stopped afterwards for a few days. Then the system died one night and came back the following evening just before I was going over the maplins.

I cant flash the board or do netin. As I said it now no longer even does a beep to say it's passed it's own checks. I dunno where to go with it.

RicardoSmith

So you bought the board and it wouldn't run at anything other than 100fsb, and you waited a month before asking for a refund? You need to test these things straight away and return then as fast as possible. The whole PSU power thing is a myth. You need a quality PSU not huge watts. I've never heard of ram being measured or damaged like that. It usually either works or it doesn't. So you had flashed the bios and then shortly afterwards the board failed Sounds like the new bios killed it. I dunno sounds to me like you did a lot of mucking around to a board that was faulty to begin with. Once you start modding something no shop is going to take it back. Especially if you tell them you've been doing it.

You should have just said the board was faulty and said nothing else. Then demanded a refund, with the usual small claims court threat.

Ryaner

Ok with the board. I was back in the shop three days after I built it with the system not running. Ie the first baord. It was two weeks later before I got talking to the tech and after having the system for two days he simply said oh I see what you mean. You have to get a bigger psu so we can rule that out and come back to us. Two days of testing for that. It ran like that for a bit until I needed the system for work so I left it on 100FSB and worked on it.
With the second board. The tech support advised me to do so the warrenty remains present on it. I checked with them before I did it. The board was rebooting randomly before the flash and it happened less afterwards.
As for the ram. It basically tested everybit of the ram. Only the first 1%didnt have error. I dont have the exact stats but basically I ran the test. Nearly 7hours later it go 100%thru testing the damaged ram it was that bad.

I'm prob gonna try looking at the board once more myself and if that doesnt work, built it into the case I bought from them with everything else I got from them and bring it over to them