Advice for buying a 3.5" HDD USB enclosure

[King Mustard]

I am looking for a reasonably priced 3.5" HDD USB enclosure.

I will be popping a 18 TB Western Digital Purple Pro HDD into it.

I have found the following enclosures that support 18TB hard drives and include a 12v power adapter:

Yottamaster DF6
Supports UASP, unsure about TRIM
£25 from Amazon UK

Orico CP35C3
Supports UASP / TRIM
£29 from Amazon UK

Orico M35C3
Supports UASP / TRIM
£35 from Amazon UK

These supports 18TB hard drives, but are not available in the UK:

• LC-Power LC-35U3-C
• Orico HM35C3
• Orico 3139U3

Any thoughts on the three above that are available in the UK?

[AGTDenton]

I have this Orico:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/ORICO-Exter...dp/B00KCCWGMQ/

So far so good, build quality wise no worse than the likes of Startech.
But my use is very rare. Simply to view old disks or dying disks to get data off. I don't use it for any lengthy period of time.

I think only the look is different between the two Orico's you mention, the spec is identical so I'd opt for the one that looks best or design features suit your needs.

With the Yottamaster I don't believe their claims of 'shock proof'. Only decent hard drive protection I've seen is within a gel pouch. and even then, a drop during operation isn't going to be saved by anything. Otherwise completely unfamiliar with the brand, but with the same disk size limitation it suggests it's the same controller.

I'm fairly certain those HDD size limits aren't set in stone. I think it just means the controller they're using was rated for that size at the time of design, and controllers at this level rarely change.

If using Windows something I recommend if you intend on keeping this drive turned on for long periods of time is disable "USB Selective Suspend".

[Saracen999]

It might be a daft question, but do you already have the 18TB Purple?

If not, I noticed an 18TB WD Elements currently on Amazon at £250. Which seeme pretty impressive for 18TB including the USB case. Dunno whether it's a Purple or not, though I'd guess its a good chance. I was tempted, but I'm after WD MyBook because they're pretty consistently DC series drives (high perfrmance but a bit noisy) to shuck, for a NAS.

There's never a guarantee with what'll be in a Elements / MyBook but, so far, my experience with MyBook has been 100% DC series. It's a bit more of a lottery, from what I can see, with Elements though. But it would at least mean not having to buy an enclosure.

As for buying enclosures or docks, I have had a few (mainly IcyDock IIRC) but, not recently enough to be any help.

[Saracen999]

Oh, and if anyone does have one of those 18TB WD Elements, I'm curious as to what was in it.