RightHere said:Take a look at this site. If the trade association for the technology hasn't had any good press releases to post about the technology in almost a year, I'd say it's pretty much not going anywhere. You can also look at the small number of announcements from the spec being final until now. Not a lot to talk about.

That page isn't updated with all the info or announcements. You need to go to the 1394 Trade Association Recent Press page.

OP, I can appreciate you being busy and having a life.

Is there anyone else who can recommend a tried and true enclosure for my new Seagate 200GB which will be used with systems running XP and ME? Thought I might be able to get in on a special this holiday weekend.

Thanks!

Thanks so much for taking the time to post these suggestions. I looked into the first two and they both got great reviews on newegg. Thinking about going with the AMS Venus as it has a fan. Newegg has it for about $54.99. I would rather spend a little more compared to the cheap enclosures out there as long as it will protect my data.

Thanks again!


SickTeddyBear said:The best 3.5" single-drive external enclosures:

Macally PHR-100AC (Firewire/USB2/Aluminum/Fanless/Initio/Cypress)

AMS Venus DS-2316CBK (Firewire/USB2/Aluminum & Plastic/Single-Fan/Oxford/Cypress)

Apricorn EZ-BUS-DTC-KIT (Firewire/USB2/Aluminum/Single-Fan/Oxford/Cypress)

AcomData HDEXXU2FE3 (Firewire/USB2/Aluminum/Fanless/Initio/Cypress)

For the greatest usability and flexibility, combo Firewire/USB2 enclosures are always preferred. The premium over USB2-only or Firewire-only enclosures is more than worth it.

I just went through this ..... I bought an IDE Drive at a computer show -- and got some cheap enclosure. After 2 days of not being able to get it to work, I put it aside for 6 weeks - too frustrating!

Finally I bought a new enclosure at CompUSA to -- USB 2.0 3'5" for $39.00 --- I know that I could have gotten a cheaper one --- but, apparently the cheap ones (bought at show) dont always work. I hooked it all up tonight --- and it took 5 minutes --- XP recognized the driver ....

Just go to CompUSA

I put a removable drive cage in mine..it looks a little ghetto but it works fine...also I use a usb to ide cable on bare drves...i know I will get LOTS of grief over this, but hard drives really arent that fragile anymore...just don't drop them or electrocute them and they are fine. And before anybody asks...or condemns ...I use a LOT of drives on a LOT of different computers and have lost exactly ONE..and it died soon after installation so was probably gonna go anyway. Everytime anybody says anything about hard drives on here, somebody's mother's father's mother-in-law always heard /knew of somebody who lost TWO Maxtors/Western Digitals/Seagates/Hitach/etc (pick one) and that's why they will NEVER buy one of those "piece of crap " drives EVER AGAIN. Codswallop ..EVERY manufacturer has had and will have again drive series that were better/worse than the others at the time...stick to major manufactrers, buy what's cheap, and hope you don't ever have to experience their RMA procedures ....and just for the record, a LOT of drives isn't 2 or 3, and StorageReview is anecdotal, not statistical...look at industry published MTF rates for a run of a couple hundred thousand to start with

I've also had lots of grief with usb to ide adapters and usb external enclosures not being detected in Windows. Here is what works (most of the time): Lots of times the external adapters/enclosures will work for a time but then Windows one day will just refuse to detect them. Sometimes Windows just doesn't detect them at all off the bat. What i do is plug in an old cheapo usb 1.1 hub. Then I wait for Windows to detect that, afterwards I plug in the USB adapter/enclosure into the usb hub. After a few seconds Windows detects it, says the usual "low speed is plugged into a high speed blah blah". The hard drive is then recognized (99% of the time) and is usable...of course it only works at USB 1.1 speeds which i don't mind if I am only copying in a few small files. In other cases, I just plug in a USB 2 hub, then plug the enclosure into that. That is when Windows recognizes the external enclosure/usb to ide adapter, and it works at USB 2 speeds. This works like 3/4 of the time. I don't know why Windows XP will detect these when plugged into a hub, but not when plugged in directly to the PC's USB port or PC's USB PCI card. Anyone else has similar experience? BTW, my file transfer speed for USB 2 is around 20 megabytes/sec.

Phantomsee said:I just went through this ..... I bought an IDE Drive at a computer show -- and got some cheap enclosure. After 2 days of not being able to get it to work, I put it aside for 6 weeks - too frustrating!

Finally I bought a new enclosure at CompUSA to -- USB 2.0 3'5" for $39.00 --- I know that I could have gotten a cheaper one --- but, apparently the cheap ones (bought at show) dont always work. I hooked it all up tonight --- and it took 5 minutes --- XP recognized the driver ....

Just go to CompUSA

kramer6string said:I got a Koutech 3.5" USB enclosure last week. It worked fine. The computer detects the drive. Transferring data is fast but there is a big problem that the files are easy to get damaged, specially the big files like movie files. I tried to copy some movie files form my local hard drive to the enclosure one and many of them had problem with reading. After playing them for few minutes, they movie clips may stop or only the sound was playing….

Is this the problem of the enclosure or the USB connection? Any suggestions? Help pls….

thanks a lot

return it?

watermish said:Hmmm. I have a one year old external MadDog 52x CD burner that I don't use anymore -- it was an almost FAR. It seemed to be a reliable external drive. Could I use this enclosure?

Is it possible to remove the CD burner drive and install a harddrive or dvd burner in these type of enclosures? Any experience out there? Do I need to check the chipset or something?

I imagine that there are a lot of other people who bought up these dirt cheap CD burner drives last year. Any tried this yet as a means to getting a cheap enclosure for HDD?

THanks!

It works fine. The external cd burner wasn't reliable at all so I removed the case and it was able to recognize a 120gig hard drive. However my Dell computer will not boot if the external enclosure is turned on. However it doesn't look really well in an external cd burner as there's no screws to secure the hard drive.

SickTeddyBear said:The best 3.5" single-drive external enclosures:
Macally PHR-100AC (Firewire/USB2/Aluminum/Fanless/Initio/Cypress)
AMS Venus DS-2316CBK (Firewire/USB2/Aluminum & Plastic/Single-Fan/Oxford/Cypress)
Apricorn EZ-BUS-DTC-KIT (Firewire/USB2/Aluminum/Single-Fan/Oxford/Cypress)
AcomData HDEXXU2FE3 (Firewire/USB2/Aluminum/Fanless/Initio/Cypress)
For the greatest usability and flexibility, combo Firewire/USB2 enclosures are always preferred. The premium over USB2-only or Firewire-only enclosures is more than worth it.
All these enclosures us the Cypress chipset. Didn't the OP say in 5.2 that "Cypress is not recommended. A lot of problems?"

What is problematic: The firewire client? 16X DVD burner compatibility?

I'm almost ready to move on the recommended Macally for $44.99 plus $5.99 shipping at Newegg... Should I be worried or confident with this enclosure?

Here is my experience. Stopped by at Fry's looking for an enclosure for the $20 Western Digital 160GB from BB. Almost got a basic Cintre enclosure but saw their Model I-335U2 One Button Model Fry's # 4526257 and got two at $34.99 each. Pretty pleased with the enclosure - I like the one-button software that allows you to select the data that will be backed up. I normally keep the enclosure attached but not powered up; then when I want to backup, I just flip the switch and hit the backup button. When it is done I turn the power button off again.

The enclosure works great as a hard drive in addition to the one-button mode!

I am attempting to also use this as a Ghost 2003 storage device but without success - anyone able to make these devices work with Ghost 2003?

JohnP