[hookem2oo7]

I have a cheap FW400/USB2 enclosure that just died on me (I know it's the enclosure rather than the drive because it has the same symptoms with several known good hard drives). I was going to buy an enclosure with FW800/USB2, but I was going to see if anyone here could recommend a particular enclosure that they have had good luck with. The cheap newegg enclosure I had only lasted a year, so I want something that is going to last longer than that

[CharlesS]

The problem with your cheap enclosure was that it probably used the Prolific chipset, as most cheap FireWire enclosures do. The chipsets that are regarded as the best around for FireWire are the ones from Oxford Semiconductor. Unfortunately, they are more expensive, but you get what you pay for in this case. Just check whatever enclosure you are looking at to see what enclosure they use. If the chipset is Oxford, they will almost always advertise that fact in the product specs somewhere, and if they don't mention the chipset, it's probably something inferior. For USB 2.0, the chipset doesn't matter so much, but for FireWire, the chipset used is far more important than who made the enclosure itself (although cooling could still be an issue with a badly designed enclosure - for this reason, it's a good idea to get an aluminum enclosure if you can, since aluminum obviously dissipates heat a lot better than plastic).

Here's the enclosure I have. It's quite nice. It has just about all the connectors you could want, and takes a serial ATA drive. It uses an Oxford 924 chipset, which is about as good as it gets.

OWC Mercury Elite-AL Quad Interface eSATA,... (MEFW924AL1K) at OWC

Here's a slightly cheaper version of the same thing which takes a Parallel ATA drive instead (and obviously is going to lack an eSATA port for this reason). It uses an Oxford 912 chipset.

OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro FW800/400 + USB... (MEFW912UAL1 ) at OWC

Here's another Oxford 924-based enclosure that someone mentioned the last time this topic came up. It looks quite nice, takes a Serial ATA drive, has eSATA, and is a bit cheaper than the one I have.

3.5 Inch Aluminum Firewire 800+ 400 +eSATA +USB 2.0 Slim Enclosure for SATA I and SATA II HDD

This one is about the most expensive you can get, but it includes both a USB 2.0 and FireWire hub right in the enclosure, to give you a few extra ports. It uses an Oxford 924 chipset and takes a Serial ATA drive, but it includes a fan, so you might want to think about that if fan noise is an issue.

NewerTech miniStack v3 eSATA/FireWire/USB2.... (FWU2ESMSV3) at OWC

These are just a few, though. You can search around and find any enclosure you like, and you might find one that's a bit cheaper than these. Just check the chipset to make sure it's Oxford, and you should be fine.

[hookem2oo7]

I went to Fry's and ended up with one almost identical: Emprex:News-Emprex-DVD writer/LCD TV/LCD Monitor/Webcam/Camera/MP3 Player/VGA Card/Speaker

It has an Oxford chipset and the hardware encryption (not that anything on here is sensitive data) is nice to have i guess.

[CharlesS]

Did you find out for sure that it uses Oxford? That page doesn't mention anything about the chipset.

[hookem2oo7]

Sure did. When I was installing the drive I made sure to check... Here's a pic I took of the chip...



The original price for the unit was $109.99, but for some unknown reason, some of the boxes had price stickers that said $59.99. I got one of the latter

[CharlesS]

Sweet, you should be all set then.

Enjoy your new external hard drive.