forum.datacad.com

Greetings forummers,

Here's an item that should be of interest to some of you: a $22 case for a 2.5" (laptop) hard drive, that you supply the drive, install it in the case -- and you have an inexpensive portable unit! So, if you use a 40GB (Samsung) HD, you'll pay only $83 for the package. Here's a review on Silent PC Review, with pictures and info (click on image):

Greetings,

Here's a link to buy this unit at NewEgg.com. $22 + $5 shipping...and here's a link to their 2.5" (laptop) hard drives.

Just ordered this setup. Carting around the big external drives when I had to backup my remote office cpu was a drag. This little guy looks like exactly what I need.

OK, I got it, I just can't get it to work. I got the enermax enclosure, but I got a different drive. It connected, plugged into the PC, windows installed the drivers, the device manager says that it's there, but It's not showing up as usable in the "my computer" area that I can select the drives to copy to. Anyone have any pointers on what I'm doing wrong? I tried the three jumper settings, but none of them seemed to work.

Here is the drive that I bought:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... etailSpecs

Hello,

Did you format the drive?

Right Click on My Computer, and select Manage, then under Storage, check out Disk Management. Might give you some more clues. Make sure the drive is formatted like Neil mentioned, and that it is assigned a unique drive letter. Some times USB drives can map to a networked drive letter that is already assigned, so check for that too.

I think I got it worked out. I fired up Partition Magic and it saw the drive. I then formatted it and it's working now. I'll keep your pointers in mind though when I try to use it on my other cpu that doesn't have partition magic.

Thanks guys.

Hello,

Once it is formatted, you're fine -- on any computer.

Greetings,

I need to replace a 400GB Seagate external hard drive -- it failed after about a year of continuous operation. I should have shut it off when I wasn't using it, but I would have hoped that just at idle, it would have been able to keep itself cool enough to last! Heat is the enemy, especially of hard drives -- and newer, bigger, and faster hard drives are hotter than the older ones.

The Seagate was passively cooled: the two metal "rails" that were screwed to the sides of the drive itself, were designed to act as heatsinks, and there was a continuous set of open slots all the way around the four narrow sides of the plastic outer case. It looked to be a good design, and again, it probably would have been fine for intermittent use, and/or for a cooler drive. The 400GB 7200.8 model that was used is a unit that runs fairly warm, however; and long term exposure to even a slightly too much heat -- is not a good thing.

So, I need to replace it, and I'm thinking of putting together something, because I think it will be better -- and it should cost a lot less, as well! Here are to two enclosures I'm considering: (click on either image to link to the NewEgg page for each)

This one has a nice big (80mm) fan, which has a much better chance of remaining quiet, while moving far more air than any tiny 30-40mm fanned enclosure. And:

This one is passive, but the metal heatsink is exposed directly to air, and the surface area of the heatsink appears to be much greater than the Seagate unit.

I'm probably going to use a Samsung hard drive, which are much cooler (and quieter) than the Seagates of a similar capacity. The fanned unit is less money, but it doesn't have Firewire; just USB. The fanned unit costs less, though, and the fan will definitely keep the drive cooler! The only downside is the possibly noisy fan...

Does anybody have experience with either of these units? TIA