Save price for Thermaltake N0012USU Max 4 Active Cooling 3 5 Inch USB 2 0 eSATA Hard Drive Enclosure
Band : Thermaltake
Model : N0012USU
Product Features :
- 3 5 inch USB 2 0 eSATA hard drive enclosure for 3 5 inch SATA hard drives
- eSATA transfer speed of up to 3 Gbps USB 2 0 transfer speed of up to 480 Mbps
- 80x80x15 mm blue LED silent fan for cool operation
- Includes easy stand foot eSATA Cable power adapter eSATA PCI bracket and USB 2 0 cable
- Vista ready
>> Died after the first use
I thougth this was a great unit with the fan and sata was just what I wanted I used it to clone one drive in December and then when I went to see what was on another drive recently the fan would start to move weakly and stop and it wouldn t power the drive up
I tried several times plugged/unplugged the drive in same issue put the drive in another unit and it booted right up
Other issue with this is these tiny phillips screws used to hold the cover on geez you almost have to be a jeweler and use tiny tools to even unscrew the case bad design there and the screws were not easy to line back up in the holes and one cross threaded
Returning this unit for warrantee repairs guess I ll see what happens
>> Excellent Quality and Performance and a Deceptively Good Buy
This is an excellent external hard drive enclosure It offers both USB and eSATA interfaces a cooling fan an included eSATA adapter kit for your computer a rugged durable and secure internal hard drive interface and USB and eSATA cables of generous length
The eSATA adapter kit is what makes this unit more of a good buy than may be obvious It includes a SATA cable to run from a spare SATA port on your motherboard to a slot plate which has a SATA to eSATA connector feeding through it and then an eSATA cable to run from that connector on the rear of your computer to this external hard drive enclosure The eSATA adapter looks a lot like Amazon com s 2FT Sata To Esata Transition Cable with Mounting Bracket so that about 11 of your purchase price for this unit is the value of this adapter and accounts for a lot of the price difference between this unit and the good selling Acomdata Model No SMBXXXU2E Blk Acomdata Samba USB 2 0 3 5 inch IDE/SATA Hard Drive Enclosure SMBXXXU2E BLK Black
Both the eSATA and USB interfaces allow the Thermaltake unit to go into and out of Windows sleep mode I have tested it with both XP and Vista The fan a whisper slient one always runs from the AC power supply but the hard drive is shut down when your computer times off the hard drives in accordance with the power selection you made in your Windows Control Panel
At first a good seller like the Acomdata SMBXXXU2E Blk mentioned above seems a better buy at about 2/3 the cost of this unit and offering EIDE or PATA hard drive interface capability in lieu of having an eSATA interface But this is deceptive
First the Acomdata does not run like a true USB drive with an EIDE hard drive installed which removes what would seem to be its great advantage If you start the computer with the drive already running it will not mount the hard drive You have to boot up your computer and then start the Acomdata external drive This is not like an integral external USB drive which starts when the computer starts sleeps stands by when the computer sleeps et cetera If you forget and left it running while you restarted your computer after installing Windows security updates for example you have to shut the computer down turn off the drive reboot the computer and then turn on the Acomdata external drive In other words it is a pain and was a disappointment for those of us who thought we could covert large EIDE hard drives we had from previous computers into convenient backup storage via a makeshift external USB hard drive for our new SATA computers
Second the internal hard drive mounting for the Thermaltake is much more secure and is much less likely to cause any harm to the hard drive during mounting it
Third the Thermaltake has a built in cooling fan which keeps the unit cooler than a natural convection unit like the Acomdata
Fourth and last because it is the most obvious the Acomdata lacks the speed of the eSATA interface whereas the Thermaltake unit not only has an eSATA interface but its purchase price includes the SATA/eSATA adapter and a nice length of external eSATA cable As stated above most of the cost difference between the two units is the cost of this included adapter
We have two of these enclosures with a third on order from Amazon com Amazon com was generous to accept our Acomdata unit back after it failed to work like an external USB drive with an EIDE disk as advertised
>> Great for Video Rendering
I purchased Pinacle Studio for video editing and it recommended having a second drive to do video rendering I knew that a USB drive would be too slow so I decided to go with an external enclosure This one has a cable and face plate for the back of your computer so you can use your internal SATA ports I purchased the Seagate Barracuda 1 5 TB 7200RPM drive Seagate Barracuda 7200 11 1 5 TB 7200RPM SATA 3Gb/s 32MB Cache 3 5 Inch Internal Hard Drive ST31500341AS Bare Drive Amazon Frustration Free Packaging Installing it was a snap except for getting the screws back in the case after the drive was in I plugged it into my computer and it recognized the drive right away After formatting it I changed my software to point to that drive for rendering I also moved my media over to it as well It works great The drive goes into sleep mode when not used but is quickly available once it is accessed I would reccomend this combination to anyone who wants more storage It is three times faster than a USB drive but you can t turn it off or unplug it like a USB drive You need to shut off your computer in order to disconnect it
