recommend me an usb enclosure\ dock for 3.5" sata hard drive

[RobTi]

Hi i need to add an external hard drive to a satellite receiver to record, now i have a few internal sata drives lying about that i would like to use so recommend me something to connect to a usb port on the receiver doesnt matter about looks just something cheap and cheerfull that i can put behind the unit.

Thanks

Robert

[DanceswithUnix]

TBH I think they are all cheap and nasty

Do you have 2.5" or 3.5" drives to put in there?

Edit to add: The world seems to be going 2.5" these days, for the cheap stuff at least.

Cheapest 3.5 enclosure on ebuyer, £15
http://www.ebuyer.com/351094-sumvisi...ure-smvsn-apex

For £40 you get a 2.5" with 500GB drive bundled in, so you know it will work well in the enclosure:

http://www.ebuyer.com/320101-hitachi...-drive-0s03455

[Mehta23]

Would you reckon the heat inside the enclosure would be a problem? I've seen a few with a fan but I don't know whether that's necessary.

[AETAaAS]

There are many parameters to consider in that question, Mehta. (still don't know your CPU BTW xD) But I suppose the most important are:

how warm is the environment,
how much passive cooling does the case allow and;
what kind of writing will happen.

In my experience, the speed of the drive (5200RPM vs 7200RPM) makes quite little difference in heat and long term reliability compared to the above, as I have had Western Digital Greens with their ambiguous 'green, low speed ratings' get pretty warm when I was doing continuous writing for 2 hours. And had Barracuda 7200s run the same thing in the same environment but cooler. Don't get me wrong, if you have the choice, for this application, you can go for the slower drive as it will offer all the performance you need and might drop a couple degrees. But if you're going to record programs like the original poster want's to do; I'm going to have to ask is it a couple programs interspersed or are you going to record everything that comes through?

Some say the number of platters in a drive make a difference but it's quite hard to make choices around this, as we usually go for capacity or drive brand.

If you go for an enclosure with a fan, buy a good one. I've had a couple enclosures with WD Greens and the only one that died had a 40mm fan quietly and abnormally vibrating.

@RobTi, wondering what kind of writing will you do? You mentioned there are a 'few' drives, do you want to use them all at once in a large enclosure or single? Or would something like this be more what you are looking for?

[RobTi]

Sorry thought i had mentioned it its for a satellite receiver to enable pvr functions, and is only as a stop gap (need it for buffering the F1 on RTL) till i can make my mind up which new receiver to go for.

ordered this as a recomend http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

[Mehta23]

(sorry for the hijack )

My drive is just gonna be for a backup of pictures and videos, and maybe Windows backups too - so I wont be using it a lot, maybe a few times a month. The linked enclosure on ebuyer seems pretty good to me... so I might just get that then