Anyone have one, that they've fitted a SATA drive into themselves?

Have seen quite a lot about, but often with these enclosures, some are not worth the hassle. Would prefer to get one that's been tried and tested

Would be useful to have SATA2 3Gb/s support, but not essential.

Cheers,

Steve

would SATA2 3Gb/s be super useful? Hi-Speed USB/USB 2.0 only operates at 1.5 Mb/s, 12 Mb/s or 480 Mb/s

:confused:

Nope, but a SATA drive is cheaper than a PATA drive these days per GB when you get to larger sizes.

As I say, I'm not too fussed about the outright transfer speed, just what enclosures people may be using.

Steve

As I say, I'm not too fussed about the outright transfer speed, just what enclosures people may be using.

Steve

Just grab some cheap Icybox's from scan. Ive bought a load of the cheap PATA ones that i stick old drives in to use on my nas...

They do pretty much every combination possible. but ill list the interfaces in order of performance:

eSATA - Fastest, just a normal sata connection

1394Firewire - marginally faster than USB2, much less CPU usage whilst active

USB2 - most flexible, but high cpu usage.

I've had one of these 'cheap' boxes - packed in after 6 months (very little usage).

Bought an Icybox a year ago to replace this and that's been fine. Friend has two - no faults either (had them a lot longer than mine).

As a bye the bye - one of the cheapest places for the Freecom enclosure with hard drives is

DVD-R, DVDR, DVD-RW & CDR disc media from SVP

They've also got Freecom USB 2 500GB drives + enclosure for

:iagree:

I've been using SVP for sometime now and they are very good!

Any drive hung off a USB port will be very slow compared with (eg) direct SATA connections. If this doesn't matter then buy any enclosure at a good price. They all use one about 3 perfectly good chipsets.

Thanks for the replies guys. I'd seen those IcyBoxes Col - just wondered how good they were. That's that question answered then

I need a fairly decent and constant transfer speed, so Firewire was preferable. But I can't seem to see that combined with SATA?

Cheers,

Steve

Have you got an internal sata connection spare?

If so have a hunt for sata to e-sata converters which are effectively a mounting plate with an esata connector on it and a wire to connect to your sata drive.

If you can find the converter (not sure if they are on general sale) then you can buy an e-sata enclosure.

HTH

Simple answer is no. Plus I want to be able to move it round anyway.

Cheers,

Steve

Wardy,

Most new systems will appear with an e-sata connector, but if moving around is your main concern then I would say USB2 anyway as F/wire is pretty rare on computers these days too.

Perhaps found the best compromise: Amazon.co.uk: 3.5" SATA to USB 2.0/Firewire HDD External Enclosure: Electronics & Photo

Has both USB2 and Firewire - that's ideal as I'll use the Firewire on my main PC at home, and can use the USB2 with client's computers etc, if Firewire isn't available.

Cheers,

Steve

The Safecom boxes are OK. I've got a couple of the type you are after which I've been using for a couple of years without problem. First one came from eBuyer but stock is erratic - my other one came from here which appears to be an offshoot of the importer.

It's actually a USB and Firewire caddy that uses IDE, they then fit an additional daughterboard that converts the IDE to SATA which is removeable. Sounds like witchcraft and too many conversions .. but it works. It also has the benefit of allowing you to use IDE or SATA drives on Firewire or USB2 which covers all the bases.

Nice find, cheers. I'll investigate.

Cheers,

Steve