External USB 2.0 hard drive enclosure. Any good?

lacsap · Post by **lacsap** » Sun Nov 30, 2003 4:38 am

I'm thinking of expanding my storage "Outside the box". Putting a Samsung SP80 or a Barracuda V 120Gb in an HD external exclosure (USB 2.0) would make it portable and outside of the heat of the case.

How does it fare regarding performance? Is there any heat issues? More / less noisy than in a case? Anyone with experience?

Thanks

Lacsap

Post by **Ralf Hutter** » Sun Nov 30, 2003 5:32 am

USB 2.0 real-world transfer speeds are about 60% of Firewire. If you're going with external storage use Firewire.

Heat issues, probably but without an external temp sensor you can't tell 'cause niether USB 2.0 or Firewire interfaces work with any of the temp monitoring apps. Put it in a case with a (generally noisy) little 40mm fan in it and pray.

There is a newfangled "case" that's nothing but a couple of flat plates with the drive sandwiched between them and what looks like a piece of screen that runs around the periphery. It looks like that may be a fairly decent way to cool the drive without having to resort to an enclosure with a noisy little fan on it. Here's a thread about it.

Some other extenal storage threads:

http://forums.silentpcreview.com/viewtopic.php?t=6770

http://forums.silentpcreview.com/viewtopic.php?t=7538

Think about NAS. I really think this is the way to go, and if something (relatively inexpensive) like this had been available when I put together my external backup system I would have gone with it. Put one of these on the end of a 50' CAT5 cable and it doesn't matter how noisy the drive is:

http://forums.silentpcreview.com/viewtopic.php?t=7187

PhilgB · Post by **PhilgB** » Sun Nov 30, 2003 5:53 am

About the NetDisk, would it be easy enough to swap the drive that is inside with a 160gb spinpoint?

Also, if there were cooling/noise issues, would you be able to remove the hardware that connects to the network/usb and build your own box?

lacsap · Post by **lacsap** » Sun Nov 30, 2003 6:34 am

Well, in Canada, for the Price of a Netdisk 80Gb (260$ CDN), I can do this instead:

- Epia 5000 (140$)
- External PSU (80$)
- Samsung SP80 (99$)

A tad more expensive, but if I need more storage, I can add up to 3 more HD very cheap. And it's totally silent

Bluefront · Post by **Bluefront** » Sun Nov 30, 2003 6:45 am

Netdisk is a very versitile external storage device.....it's plenty fast, quiet and runs around 38c. Why would you want to rip it apart? If you need more storage just buy two units.

The present driver (2.14) only allows one computer at a time to read/write to the disk, although all computers on the network can read the disk at the same time. Using the software you can change which computer has the read/write priority on-the-fly. The next driver release should let all network computers read/write at the same time.....

Post by **Ralf Hutter** » Sun Nov 30, 2003 6:50 am

lacsap wrote:Well, in Canada, for the Price of a Netdisk 80Gb (260$ CDN), I can do this instead:

- Epia 5000 (140$)
- External PSU (80$)
- Samsung SP80 (99$)

A tad more expensive, but if I need more storage, I can add up to 3 more HD very cheap. And it's totally silent

Don't forget to add some RAM and a case too.

DonP · Post by **DonP** » Sun Nov 30, 2003 9:27 am

lacsap wrote:I'm thinking of expanding my storage "Outside the box". Putting a Samsung SP80 or a Barracuda V 120Gb in an HD external exclosure (USB 2.0) would make it portable and outside of the heat of the case.
How does it fare regarding performance? Is there any heat issues? More / less noisy than in a case? Anyone with experience?

I had a 120G Cuda V in a USB2 box.. and it doesn't work very well.. performance was OK.. didn't really rely on it for performance.. and the Cuda V isn't exactly known for it's speed anyway. The real problem is heat and power..
heat wise.. it got quite hot under heavy use.. hot to the touch.. can't give exact figures because like Ralf said SAMRT doesn;t work over USB2.
But the worst thing is power drain.. Seagates (in my experience and that of some sys admins) generally require a lot of power and the external brick for the USB2 box couldn't always handle the start-up current. After a few months it wouldn;t start reliably and there was data corruption.
This wasn't a fault in the disk.. it's now happily running inside a normal case.
So.. my vote is for not using a Cuda V 120G in a USB2 box.. especially one from the ME-720 series (sorry.. couldn;t find any other model number on it). I recommend a spinpoint in another USB2 case.. or like was suggested some kind of NAS (not sure what performance you'll get from a Epia mobo however).

fmah · Post by **fmah** » Sun Nov 30, 2003 8:10 pm

I picked up a USB 2.0 box for $29 which supports hard drives or CD-ROMs. Seems okay, not super fast, but suitable for secondary storage or backup. This unit has a small fan that is loud. This case is plastic, and I would imagine any case that is plastic will have to have a fan.

If you just want a hard drive, then you probably should be looking at aluminum units that should stay cool.

External USB 2.0 hard drive enclosure. Any good?

External USB 2.0 hard drive enclosure. Any good?

Re: External USB 2.0 hard drive enclosure. Any good?