External USB 2.0 hard drive case recommendations

[Tod]

I'm looking at getting an external USB 2.0 hard drive case
for my ATA 80 GB hard drive.
Anyone have any recommendations ?
I was looking at Plumax, but someone recommended Bytecc ?

 

[CWatters]

I'm looking at getting an external USB 2.0 hard drive case
for my ATA 80 GB hard drive.
Anyone have any recommendations ?
I was looking at Plumax, but someone recommended Bytecc ?

For style, I quite like these....

Home page: http://www.stardom.com.tw/main_e.htm
Specific model: http://www.stardom.com.tw/images/L-1-N-1.jpg

They are aluminium extrusion (silver anodised sides) and thick aluminium
plate (black anodised top and bottom plates). They take a 5.25" drive so a
3.5" is no problem. The power supply is of the in-the-cable type (at least
on the single drive model. I'm not sure about the 4 bay version). They have
a small fan but with the front blanking plate fitted there seems to be no
air inlet holes - I drilled a line of holes in the base plate along the
front where they can't be seen (feet keep them off the desk). My WD 100 G
runs nice and cool.

Main problem is availability and price. I'm in Belgium and got mine from a
German distributor.

Colin

 

[Neil Maxwell]

I'm looking at getting an external USB 2.0 hard drive case
for my ATA 80 GB hard drive.
Anyone have any recommendations ?
I was looking at Plumax, but someone recommended Bytecc ?

I have a Bytecc ME-320; $30 from Newegg. It works fine so far, but
it's pretty cheap. The case fit/screwless assembly is less than
stellar (if you dropped it, it would assuredly fly to pieces), and the
fan is quite loud. I haven't really put it through its paces yet, and
only have a week or so on it.

I hadn't realized just how quiet my Maxtor Onetouch is until I had the
Bytecc sitting on my desk for a few days.


Neil Maxwell - I don't speak for my employer

 

[dg]

I should comment here about the Stardom cases. I just bought the 2 device
IDE enclosure. It appears to be a 3 device box but the bottom box houses a
small power supply. The single device boxes use an external supply (I
believe, I don't own one). The fan on the 2 device unit is LOUD. The fan
also interferes with my phone that is right next to the unit, so I hear a
hum while on the phone. I have ordered a Papst 60mm fan to replace the
stock fan, I replace all of my fans with super quiet Papst fans, they are
awesome. Don't let the "heat sink" on the side of the units fool you, they
are not functional heat sinks. In fact, they have little rubber feet
isolating the heat sink from actually touching the aluminum enclosure. But
they do look good and come with high quality USB 2 labeled cables.

**Overall I really like the Stardom Sohotank units.**

I bought it a www.scsi4me.com which also has a ton of great removeable drive
enclosures and RAID array racks. Good service too.

--Dan

 

[Mike S.]

I have a Bytecc ME-320; $30 from Newegg. It works fine so far, but
it's pretty cheap. The case fit/screwless assembly is less than
stellar (if you dropped it, it would assuredly fly to pieces), and the
fan is quite loud. I haven't really put it through its paces yet, and
only have a week or so on it.

I hadn't realized just how quiet my Maxtor Onetouch is until I had the
Bytecc sitting on my desk for a few days.

The "ME-320 Series" cases are commonly available from eBay dealers too,
they are very inexpensive. I've used them on CDR and DVDR drives without
problem. This weekend, I was at a computer show and some of the vendors
had these for sale. The boxes had big gold stickers on front, saying "NEW
VERSION" "Supports drives larger than 300 GB".

What are the issues with drives of this size, and why would a "new"
version of a USB-to-IDE converter board be required for drives of this
size?

 

[Mr. Grinch]

What are the issues with drives of this size, and why would a "new"
version of a USB-to-IDE converter board be required for drives of this
size?

From what I've read on review sites and this forum, there are different
chipsets out there used for USB-ATA conversion. Some of the "old" chipsets
had limits on the drive sizes they supported. The most commonly mentioned
limit was 128(135)GB. I never heard of any 300GB limit until now. But I do
notice on many web retailer sites, they mention "New Chipset, Supports drives
over XXXGB".

I wonder where exactly the limit is occuring. The chipset? The firmware
driving it?. But it sounds like some of the developers of these products
aren't exactly forward thinkers. It's kind of like the programmers who are
still hard-coding their apps for C:\

For the Plumax 525, I found one vendor site that says it does 200GB, and
another that says it does 250GB. Maybe they only report what they've tested?
No idea.

http://www.dealsonic.com/plcoideusb2i.html?AID=8256927&PID=1167010
http://www.memoryexpress.com/FrameEnclosure.php

Might want to google the web and this group for more info on external usb /
firewire drive size limits.

 

[CWatters]

I should comment here about the Stardom cases. I just bought the 2 device
IDE enclosure. It appears to be a 3 device box but the bottom box houses a
small power supply. The single device boxes use an external supply (I
believe, I don't own one).

Yes that's right. I've got one. Thanks for letting us know anout the
internal PSU on the larger units. Might get one as well because they do look
smart.

 

[dg]

And by the way, the Stardom case I bought did NOT come with a driver disk.
However, there ARE drivers for XP for these USB2.0 cases. You can download
them from www.stardom.com.tw The chipset is a Cypress AT2. The drivers fiz
some undesirable BSODs.

--Dan

 

[CWatters]

And by the way, the Stardom case I bought did NOT come with a driver disk.

Hi thats odd, must be a mistake? My single bay unit came with drivers on a
floppy and it's working fine on my Win XP PC.