eSata External Hard Drive Enclosures

Hiya folks, thinking of getting a new external hard drive - the question is do I just go for a ready built usb 1TB external or buy a Samsung F1 and get an eSata Enclosure?? Looking on the net the merits of eSata over USB are pretty mixed with some people claiming that they are not as much faster as the spec claims.
So does anybody have one of these babies set up and can tell me if it is worth spending the extra £15 or so to go down the eSata route as opposed to the tried and trusted USB ready built stuff.

thanks
dc.

i have two F1's in icybox esata enclosures. i went down that route as i knew what drives i was getting, the F1 being one of the fastest drives around, and esata being far faster than usb2. with the F1 at about £70 and the icybox at £20 it was a good price, and for that extra speed and a decent built caddy it was well worth it

i use mine for backing up two seperate drives, and to do so via esata vs ubs saves literally hours. it takes about 4 hours to copy 1tb via esata and more like 7 hours via usb2

going down the caddy route also means you can choose if you want a fancy caddy or cheap basic one, if you are concerned cosmetically

Thanks for that uni, yes I was leaning toward the Samsung F1 as you don't really know what drive is in most of the external models.

What icybox did you get as that was what I was also taking a fancy too ...

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Originally Posted by uni

i have two F1's in icybox esata enclosures. i went down that route as i knew what drives i was getting, the F1 being one of the fastest drives around, and esata being far faster than usb2. with the F1 at about £70 and the icybox at £20 it was a good price, and for that extra speed and a decent built caddy it was well worth it

i use mine for backing up two seperate drives, and to do so via esata vs ubs saves literally hours. it takes about 4 hours to copy 1tb via esata and more like 7 hours via usb2

going down the caddy route also means you can choose if you want a fancy caddy or cheap basic one, if you are concerned cosmetically

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I think most of the "branded" external harddrives have very good cosmetics.
To be honest difference between 4 hours and 7 hours is not very much when you do it overnight.
And note that most DIY caddy don't have sufficient cooling for the drive, which could led to early failure. Branded one (mostly) come with better cooling / spin-down feature.

And at 50-55MB/s over eSATA (from the value you quoted above), even a WD Greenpower drive would be able to achieve that speed.

Perhaps it is better for you to put that drive in your desktop. I guess if you're copying from the main desktop drive your computer over eSATA will be sluggish/non-accessible in that 4 hours, not so when over USB.

My personal experience is NEVER get a drive that will transfer faster than your OS drive, as that drive will halt your system down to the point even the mouse pointer may stop working, if you suddenly decide to transfer file >1GB in size from your OS drive

I'm using that Same 1TB Samsung F1, but in an AC Ryan [ACR-HD50138] eSATA AluBox :cool:
I also use AC Ryan enclosures for my external 2.5" and optical drives as well :)

i would too go down the esata route

esata all the way.

can recommend the Akasa Integral box as being very capable. Use it as external video drive when editing on the move. Scan has them.

E-Sata definately worth the extra few pounds if transfering lots of data, ont thing worth mentioning it may need to be plugged in before switching the pc on as not all pcs allow hotswapping of esata drives. HDTune results from my less than speedy 160gb samsung. Esata = twice the average transfer speed.

http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y1/...LuxonEsata.jpghttp://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y1/...usbresults.jpg

I've got a 1TB SpinPoint inside an Enermax Jazz enclosure and, via eSATA, it's a beautiful thing. :)

Another vote for eSATA cos the drive acts much more like an internal than an external 1 when connected via eSATA. Also gives you the option of putting the drive into your PC at a later date and buying another drive to go in your caddy...thats what I plan to do when my 500GB samsung on my caddy is full, throw that into my PC and buy a 1TB to go into the caddy. Speed difference is noticeable although not sure its quite the 3GB/s or whatever that it claims to be.

I also have an eSATA drive enclosure that can be turned into a USB if desired. I much prefer eSATA as it is faster.
I only use the USB if I have to move data to another computer that does not support eSATA.

i have a silentmaxx hdd enclosure and swear by it...

It reduced the noise levels on my raptor by 99%