External Hard Drive Enclosures

I"ve been combing through the listings at Newegg and elsewhere and the range of external drive enclosure options is daunting. For starter there are so many companies which make them and so many options within their offerings. Most options get a mix of good and bad reviews and the prices range from very low to quite high. Since I only intend on buying three (probably single-bay) enclosures, price is not a primary concern. I'm much more concerned with long-term reliability. Even heat is not so much of an issue for me since I live in San Francisco, but fans are fine. 

For a while I used ICY DOCK single-bay enclosures without fans. I rarely had problems with 2TB drives. I tried one 3TB drive and ran into trouble with the USB 2.0 connector. Too slow, I am guessing. I also tried an Icy Dock dual drive enclosure with fan about two years ago, but I couldn't get my computer to read the JBOD configuration either attached by a firewire cable or a USB 2.0.So, question #1: In the wilderness of companies making enclosures, are there one or two that make consistently reliable, user-friendly (screwless?) external cases? 

Question #2 has to do with I/O. Which kinds of !/O connectors are the most reliable current standard(s) for storage. In the past have generally used firewire 800 because my computers have that connector readily available and it has been a reliable transfer standard. I assume USB 3.0 is now the most ubiquitous fast connection for I/O and will remain that way through the release of Windows 10. However, simply for data transfer from internal to external hard drives is that the best connection to use? What about eSATA or Thunderbolt 2?  

Early this fall I will upgrade the internals of both my computers. At that point I will choose a new graphics card to prepare for a NEC UHD monitor and I/O connectors for storage, meanwhile I want to figure out which external enclosures will work best as Windows 10 approaches.

Thanks, as always for the excellent consulting help.

Speed first, in order:
1. Thunderbolt
2. USB  3 (but in real world it is almost the same as THunderbolt)
2a. eSATA 6Gb/s
3. eSATA 3Gb/s
4. FW 800 (huge drop off from 1-3)
5. USB 2

In the real world you won't see too much difference between the top 4 (1-3) and only a little bit of a drop off to #3.  That is because the interfaces are faster than the actual drives in 1-2a so while the interface can transfer data faster, the drive can't feed the data that fast.

I really like this enclosure for both flexibility in how you can configure it, it being fanned, having just about any kind of RAID as a possibility, etc:
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/M3QX2KIT0GB/

It's a high quality product and supported well.

As for Win 10, I wouldn't go anywhere near it in 2015.  Let others do the "beta" testing.

I've used ICY Dock enclosures for a number of years and they have been totally reliable and work well. The one I have right now is a slightly older version of the current MB561U3S-4S. It holds four drives in hot swappable trays and is fan cooled. Mine connects with USB 2.0 and eSATA. The current ones use USB 3.0 and eSATA. I use it on eSATA connected to a card in the computer. It operates in a JBOD configuration. Normally it's powered off unless I want to access the drives to transfer files or look at something stored there. When I want to use it, I just turn on a power switch in a power center and the drives power up and connect in just a few seconds. I also like the idea that the transformer is internal and there is no power "brick".

The transfer speeds on eSATA are very fast, and seem roughly comparable to USB 3.0 speeds on my computer. USB 2.0 would probably be agonizingly slow for any large amounts of data. It seems like firewire never really caught on and is now fading away. I would not choose it for anything I wanted to use much into the future.

I agree with EJ. I have their thunderbolt version of the same and it has worked flawlessly on my Mac Pro. I've tested the speed of various drives in it as JBOD, including SSD drives (you have to get a special mounting kit if you want to use 2.5" drives) and it works very well. Of course if you use RAID it would be even faster, but even without it the speed is substantial. I do not think that is the bottleneck on my computer anyway.

I never turn my computer off unless I am away for a few days, the enclosure allows the drives to sleep and I've never had any issues with overheating or bad sectors. I usually cycle my drives every 3 yrs or so (they are full by then) and there has been no problem. Of course ALL drives will fail given time, but 3 yrs seem to be fine.

Pradeep

Here is another option for external drives with USB3 & eSATA. The 2 & 4 HD bay housings have a fan (it's nice and quiet) and they can be set up as RAID or JBOD/independent drives.
http://www.startech.com/HDD/Enclosures/?sort=3&page=all

E.J.
I assume you like the jMicron chipset. What do you recommend for drives? I am inclined not to populate all four bays, but probably use 2-2TB drives.

I'm going to "window shop" for a few days, focusing on the three companies (including Startech & Icy Dock), looking especially at two-bay enclosures with fans.

Thanks,

--Gib

Back to connectors for a moment. It seems we are on the verge of a new connector standard -- USB Type-C which will be backwards compatible (with an adapter) and allow for very fast transfer speeds (USB 3.1) and device charging. It apparently can also be used to connect to 4k monitors instead of HDMI. I believe USB 3.0 speeds are sufficient for my storage needs, but the tech reviews suggest we are likely to see a new connector standard along with higher speeds. I assume it will be awhile before we see that connector-style appear in external enclosures.

Gib Robinson wrote:Back to connectors for a moment. It seems we are on the verge of a new connector standard -- USB Type-C which will be backwards compatible (with an adapter) and allow for very fast transfer speeds (USB 3.1) and device charging. It apparently can also be used to connect to 4k monitors instead of HDMI. I believe USB 3.0 speeds are sufficient for my storage needs, but the tech reviews suggest we are likely to see a new connector standard along with higher speeds. I assume it will be awhile before we see that connector-style appear in external enclosures.

Higher speed connectors are fairly pointless for traditional hard drives but not for other things.  USB3.0 is already way faster than the fastest spinning platter HD can get data off of the drive.  Generational HD speed increases stalled out a long time ago - they aren't going up at an appreciable rate from generation to generation anymore.  So a faster connection, if you are going to use traditional HD's, aren't going to buy you much especially on a data drive, which is what externals tend to be used for.  Very little use is made of the memory cache on a data drive since you are basically reading the data once and writing it once for a file making the benefit of the cache fairly insignificant and that's where a faster interface could help you.

Thank you, E.J. USB 3.0 is so ubiquitous it gives me lots of choices at reasonable prices.

What HDs do you recommend using to populate the OWC external enclosure?

--G

I have been using nothing but HGST for the last couple of years.

E.J.
Does the OWC 4-bay enclosure do well with 3TB drives? I'm inclined to use just two drives (rather than four).

I will likely take your lead and try HGST drives and use the drives rated at 2m hrs MTBF. If you have specific advice about drive size or series, please pass it on.

Thanks,

--Gib

I have 4 3TB drives in mine in a RAID 10 configuration.

I think you take more photographs than I do . Glad to hear the enclosure functions with 4 3TB drives.

Thanks, E.J., this thread is saving me hours of pouring over stats & reviews and even when I take that route I never know which "experts" to believe. I very much appreciate the reliable help I get from you & other NSN members.

Gib Robinson wrote:E.J.
Does the OWC 4-bay enclosure do well with 3TB drives? I'm inclined to use just two drives (rather than four).

I will likely take your lead and try HGST drives and use the drives rated at 2m hrs MTBF. If you have specific advice about drive size or series, please pass it on.

Thanks,

--Gib

I have 6TB HGST drives in the OWC enclosures and they are the fastest HDs (apart from solid state) that I've ever used. I've got read/write speeds in excess of 200MB/sec as measured with Quickbench - in a non-RAID configuration. 

Pradeep