recommend external HDD enclosure

[Marin85]

Hi,

I am looking for an external and relatively portable SATA 3.5'' HDD enclosure with support for USB 2.0 and eSata. I would like to put one of those 2 TB WD drives into it to (temporarily) resolve my storage needs. It seems like not every enclosure out there can handle HDDs up to that capacity. As a form factor, something like Macally PHR-S100SUA or Macally T-S350SU would be great. You may ask why not take one of these then? Because it seems like none of them is available here in Germany or at least I am not able to google out any German vendor selling one of these I have previously bought a G-S350SUA for a friend of mine, but this type is slightly bigger than what I would call optimal for me. So, I am now looking for some alternatives. Any recommendations?

Thanks in advance,

Marin

[Navck]

This is something in the states, but I highly recommend you to get an enclosure like this:
http://www.newegg.com/product/product.a ... 6817173042

You want a fan in there for the harddrive's lifespan.

[Marin85]

Oh, that looks very nice, and I guess you are right about the built-in fan prolonging the life-span of such a hard drive. But it seems I will have to consider this enclosure for my next drive since I had already got one. I ended up buying Icy Box IB-390StUSD-B from RaidSonic. It actually consists of two parts, the enclosure, which looks like this, and a dock that can be connected right to a SATA port of a desktop motherboard. The enclosure has just the right size for me as it is only slightly bigger than the HD itself and so far is giving me excellent performance. I will post more about it later.

Cheers,

Marin

[mediasponge]

Another option is to just get a drive dock like this one and put the drive in a padded case when not in use.