Looking for USB 2,5" Silent drive

kike_1974 · Post by **kike_1974** » Thu Sep 28, 2006 4:37 pm

I see 2 options
1) buying an enclosure + HD
2) buying a full product

Problem with 1) is that I can't find an enclosure that connects through SATA, all are IDEs.
Problem with 2) is upgradability, but I don't care too much.

Any recomendations?

kike_1974 · Post by **kike_1974** » Sat Sep 30, 2006 8:14 am

Anyone?

If nobody has any experience with these drives, could anyone at least suggest which 2,5" silent drive is a good option for such an enclosure? I mean the most silent option

Thanks

peerke · Post by **peerke** » Sat Sep 30, 2006 10:01 am

I think 2,5" Sata drives are too new to be widely supported by external enclosures. Wait a few month's and things will have changed.
The drives themselves are in the recommended list; check it out!

Beel · Post by **Beel** » Sun Oct 01, 2006 8:08 am

kike_1974,

I don't have any firsthand experience with 2.5" external enclosures, but it might help if you posted why you are interested in the choices you made. (SATA vs PATA, 2.5" vs 3.5")

Also how do you plan on using it? External boot drive, or convenient backup? What is most important to you, size, speed, quiet, etc.?

Those kinds of things might help someone here to give you some valid suggestions.

In my case, I am using a 3.5" PATA drive in an external enclosure. While I was searching, I remember seeing both 2.5" PATA enclosures, and a few 3.5" SATA enclosures. One thing that concerns me is cooling. After I bought the enclosure I am using, I found out that although the enclosure is aluminum, the drive is encased in plastic. That would probably be a serious issue if I were using it for an external boot drive. However, using it for backup, it's not on long enough to get too warm.

Another option you might consider is getting a 3.5" enclosure, and mounting your hard drive in a 2.5" to 3.5" adapter. Then put the entire hard drive assembly in the enclosure. This gives you more flexibility in your enclosure choices. Depending on the adapter you get, I think some of them convert the SATA to PATA, so that could affect your choice of enclosure if you go that route.

Post back with more information and someone should have more ideas.

kike_1974 · Post by **kike_1974** » Mon Oct 16, 2006 4:19 am

I need it for portable data. I finally got a really silent system, and now my old 2,5" 40GB external usb enclosured HD is the source of noise.
So I'd like to replace it. What I am looking for:
- Portable (small): that's why I chose 2,5". Smaller HDs than 2,5" are very expensive and with lower capacity.
- SILENT!!: this is spcr

Post by **MikeC** » Mon Oct 16, 2006 7:49 am

We recently reviewed a Seagate 2.5" external drive. No idea whether it was SATA or not, but it was quiet.

It will be difficult to document appreciable noise differences between the drive enclosures. There may be some differences, but if you're using it for portability, then it's not being used constantly, so differences really should be pretty minor. The quietest 2.5" HDDs so far have been Samsung, WD Scorpio and Seagate 5400 rpm drives. The differences between them are small enough that they are basically interchangeable.