Best external enclosure for a WD purple 3.5" drive

[GaretJax]

I will likely try to use my laptop for a BI machine since I just found out that my chip is probably good enough. As a result, I will be hooking up a WD purple drive using an external enclosure. I have a Dell M6700 so it has USB 3.0 and eSata connection. Which is the better way to go and can you recommend an enclosure to use?

Thanks a lot.

 

[dryfly]

I have been using Rosewill and NexStar enclosures from Newegg for several years, both IDE and SATA. I've never had one fail. I use them for backup HD's so they are not in use continuously. I have noticed if left powered up for several hours the case get a little warm.

For full time duty I think I might look for a case with a fan.

 

[GaretJax]

I have been using Rosewill and NexStar enclosures from Newegg for several years, both IDE and SATA. I've never had one fail. I use them for backup HD's so they are not in use continuously. I have noticed if left powered up for several hours the case get a little warm.

For full time duty I think I might look for a case with a fan.

I was looking for units that support an eSata interface, but am having difficulty finding one that supports more than one drive and isn't too expensive.

I have found a few such USB 3.0 docks including this one.

 

[GaretJax]

I found this one too - probably as inexpensive as I am going to find.

 

[MaxIcon]

I'd recommend against NexStar, specifically their current gen MX box, which has eSata/USB3 and RAID capability.

I have an older NexStar MX USB2 box that's been very reliable for years running RAID1. Based on this, I bought a couple of their newer eSata/USB3 NST-400MX-S3R boxes for work, put some WD Red drives in them (one with 2x2TB, one with 2x3TB, both running Raid1), and started using them for data archives. Both boxes have corrupted the data several times, and I've taken them out of service after spending many hours recovering data. I set up the 2x2TB as individual drives as a test, and it corrupted one of them as well.

Amazon's review page for these boxes has multiple reviews with the same problems. My older USB2 box is still running well, and recently survived the loss of one of its old 2TB Samsung drives with no problems.

I've switched to WD MyBook Duos, which have been much more reliable, but are a bit pricey (and not what you're asking about). They come set up as Raid0, so have to be switched over to reduce data risk, and want to install a driver as well.

 

[GaretJax]

I'd recommend against NexStar, specifically their current gen MX box, which has eSata/USB3 and RAID capability.

I have an older NexStar MX USB2 box that's been very reliable for years running RAID1. Based on this, I bought a couple of their newer eSata/USB3 NST-400MX-S3R boxes for work, put some WD Red drives in them (one with 2x2TB, one with 2x3TB, both running Raid1), and started using them for data archives. Both boxes have corrupted the data several times, and I've taken them out of service after spending many hours recovering data. I set up the 2x2TB as individual drives as a test, and it corrupted one of them as well.

Amazon's review page for these boxes has multiple reviews with the same problems. My older USB2 box is still running well, and recently survived the loss of one of its old 2TB Samsung drives with no problems.

I've switched to WD MyBook Duos, which have been much more reliable, but are a bit pricey (and not what you're asking about). They come set up as Raid0, so have to be switched over to reduce data risk, and want to install a driver as well.

I am reaching this same conclusion for all of the cheaper products. I literally haven't found a 4 bay enclosure for less than $200 that doesn't have issues. Even so I am thinking the $200 units might still have issues since they don't have many feedbacks. When $200 is half the price of an optiplex 7020 with a Haswell i7 chip, it gives me great pause. In looking at the 7020 mini tower, it appears that there is room for at least 3 more HDs with very little cost (and maybe even a fourth).