External Drives & Enclosures

K

Kahai

Distinguished Member
so on monday night i purchased two items from newegg:
Newegg.com - Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST3500320AS 500GB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM
and
Newegg.com - Thermaltake N0012US Aluminum eSATA External Enclosure - Retail

at a total of $176.58 with shipping and rush processing

i needed a new HD and thought it would be smarter to buy an external enclosure for it(to take over to my friends room and such)


and then yesterday i found out that, since i wanted to mainly use the Drive on eSATA i also needed to buy a controller for that:

Newegg.com - Rosewill RC-210 Silicon Image e-SATA PCI Controller Card - Also includes an additional Low Profile Size PCI Bracket - Retail

which is supposed to be a quality product, on sale from the new year ^_^

and while i was at it, i bought a fan controller/temperature reader: Newegg.com - NZXT SENTRY 1 Controller Panel - Retail

both of those cost me: $51.66 with shipping and rush processing on both ^_^

---

enough about me, on to the thread.

External Drives and enclosures.

Does anyone else have any? i know some of my friends here at school have them and i guess i joined the bandwagon ^_^
 
I just bought one the other day for 15 bucks... It's a USB 2.0 enclosure to stick my old hard drives in.

FYI: connecting an eSATA drive to an eSATA-to-PCI converter is probably slower than getting a USB 2.0 or Firewire enclosure and connecting it straight to the motherboard...

Doesn't your motherboard have a SATA port on it? You can connect a eSATA *bracket* to the SATA port and take advantage of the higher speeds without shelling out the money for a PCI adapter.

Nice hard drive though, the 7200.11 is great!
 
actually idk :frowning:

i cant remember, oh well i paid for it already, it was only 16.99

and i think ill be fine whatever happens ^_^

it shoudl be coming on friday ^_^
 
Don't worry - you can still do just that. Just plug in the bracket that comes with the PCI card in to the motherboard (don't connect the PCI card) and you're all set :smile:
 
^ okaydokay

i really like the my enclosure i bought, the blue LED fan ^_^ and it its eSATA and USB 2.0 so when i go to my friends room, i will connect it through the USB and when im in my room, the eSATA! :smile:
 
^ yes the external is has both ^_^ it was one of the reason i bought it, it was either USB2 and Firewire, or USB2 and eSATA, eSATA is faster so i went with that, otherwise i have two firewire ports anyways ^_^
 
I have a External USB2.0 hard drive that i use constantly. I have had it for about the better half of 2 years now. I swear by that thing. It has saved my bacon a few times when i have had crashes. :smile:
 
^ yeah i understand that, i have had some HD die and never had back ups :frowning:

im just really running low on my single drive right now, the vista-partition is down to 5Gb and the second partition is down to 1Gb :frowning:

i really need my new HD hopefully it will be here tomorrow ^_^
 
I have always made sure i had plenty of space. With my External i have over 1TB worth of space. Which i am getting dangerously close to filling. I have to get a new HDD soon...
 
^ wow thats awesome lol

well it came in ^_^ YAY

its pretty, so i got both my HD and the enclosure

im about to test it all out now, on USB2 first ^_^

--- Problem now ---

okay, so everything seemed to be alright, i put together the enclosure and HD and when i put the USB into the machine, Vista found it and "installed" things, however it would not show up in "computer" so i could not acces it. i put in the eSATA bracket and rebooted, BIOS sees the drive, as "SATA MASTER ONE 500GB" and then i load into vista and it "installs" more things for the eSATA, however "Computer" still does not see it, i rebooted again, nothing, now the reveiws on newegg said to update the firmware, so i downloaded the update, only to find out one: its only a CD or Floppy boot disk update, and two i dont have either medium :frowning:

so i bring it over to my friends room, his vista machine cant see it either, and yet it "installs" the same stuff like on my machine,and his XP cant see it either :frowning:

the only thing i havent tried yet is Linux, but im not in my room ATM

hopefully this is a firmware problem, but why is BIOS finding it, VIsta finding it, and Device manager sees it, but "computer" cant :frowning: please help this lost child of technology.
 
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You're not going through a USB hub are you ? My 500Gb Freecom ext HDD gave problems being recognized at first when I put it through a 4-way hub with 2 flash drives, even though it has its own power supply. Worked fine as soon as I connected it directly to the mobo.

ADD

Ignore me - didn't see the 2nd post !
 
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Well it turns out my HD is actually one HD split in two partitions, (stupid me) ill have to edit my signature. SO i bought a 500 GB HD Western Digital 7200 RPM. ITs internal but i bought a external case and connected it by USB. with the case it came out to 450 riyals (exactly 120 bucks) good deal??
 
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Great Deal. It is hard to find a HDD and enclosure for that amount. Some places you can not find the HDD for that price. Plus the Enclosure is about $40 itself.
 
i have one of these.

but apparently i could have bought this:
0JXK1212.jpg
for the same price on one site that sells it...=p
 
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