external hard disk enclosures

raregems · Post by **raregems** » Fri Oct 27, 2006 5:36 pm

Hi spcrers,
long time since I've been on the boards. Thought I'd share some experiences of external enclosures. I'm on the way to ditching my desktop and getting a laptop so I'm using external disks more now. I've not found one that has a fan that isn't annoying. I've also decided that getting a nas device is pretty pointless as my pc is sat on all the time.

I've currently got a nexstar3 which is fanless aluminum but strangely the hd can internally vibrate against the wall which is very noticeable. The one real success though is using Hitachi hard disks and setting aggressive power management. This really does work on any machine I take the disk to whereas my other hard disk is permanently warm and spun up.

I'm looking for a firewire 800 enclosure for a mac that will let me pick are a hitachi hard disk.

I am slightly intrigued by the formac enclosures. Does anyone own one and what is the inteligent temperature management ?

g.

zhenya · Post by **zhenya** » Sat Oct 28, 2006 5:41 pm

Perhaps the point of a NAS that you are missing is that you are no longer significantly tied to the short cable lengths of USB or Firewire that force you to have the noisy drive in the same room with you. My NAS is rather noisy, but it sits in the basement with my modem, router, etc, and it doesn't bother me. I haven't heard an external drive that I'd happily sit next to all day. For me, going to a NAS was the holy grail for silence.