external harddrive casings and questions.

[FreddyFoobar]

Hello.

To make a long story short, I was 'tricked' into purchasing an external
harddrive which amounted to just an ibm 120GB harddrive put into a
cheap no name brand third party casing. (It was cheap, so I guess I
got what I deserved.)

Well, the third party casing is huge, and loud. And I want to change that.

What external harddrive casing that are out there which meet the
following criteria:

1. Quiet
2. Small (within reason.)
3. usb 2.0
4. can fit a 120GB drive
(or small enough, but still can accomodate various drives dimensions,
just in case I mis-estimate my drive size.)



Also, has anyone used buslink external harddrives, and are they
reliable, quiet, and compact?

Thanks.

 

[CWatters]

The short answer is lots various price points and sizes (eg to suit all
drive sizes). Do a web search.

I've just built a USB 2.0 unit around one of these boxes and a WD 120G
drive.

They might be too big and expensive for you but I think they are very smart.
The PSU is a sealed external unit.

http://www.stardom.com.tw/external-box-04.htm

Home page here

http://www.stardom.com.tw

They aren't available everywhere.

They are designed for 5.25" drives (eg CD/RW or DVD) so will take most 3.25"
drive easily (the internal 80 way cable is a little short perhaps but no big
deal). Noise level is hard to judge. I used a WD drive and that makes most
of the noise. There is a small fan but I suspect this may not be needed if
you bolt the drive to the bottom if the all metal box. The supplied front
panel has no holes so it's hard to see where the air goes in if using the
fan. I drilled a line of cooling holes in the bottom plate near the front
(fan is at the rear).

It sits on my desk under my wireless router.

Colin