HD Enclosure on Ebay - Any reviews?

[ravisghosh]

I was looking for some Hard Drive Enclosure with eSATA and came across this one on ebay:

http://cgi.ebay.com/Power-Over-eSATA-USB-eSATAp-2-5-HDD-Enclosure-USB2-0-/280710046930?_trksid=p5197.m7&_trkparms=algo%3DLVI%26itu%3DUCI%26otn%3D2%26po%3DLVI%26ps%3D63%26clkid%3D1690357399782344954#ht_4122wt_1274

it seems to provide power over eSATA but I have not heard of this brand called Shentek. Any idea about the quality.

Also, will it make big difference in terms of reliability and life of hard disk if I get a cheap metallic enclosure instead of a costly one.

 

[compulsivebuilder]

The power over eSATA feature requires support at the PC end as well as the case. If you don't have a powered eSATA port, then it simply won't work.

Judging by the photo of the cable, however, it looks like you can use a regular eSATA port and parasite the power from a USB connection (the common solution on 2.5" eSATA cases).

I've used a variety of external cases, and they are all pretty much the same. The eSATA cases for 2.5" disks that I've used most run around $35, made by Ritmo or Welland. I haven't come across Shentek before, but there are more than a few companies I've never heard of.

If the case is too cheap the interface board inside may be shoddily made, and probably has cheap connectors, so it may break easily. The drive is usually not damaged when the case fails, and you can often just transfer it to another case, although there's a risk you could corrupt the data - that's the biggest worry. It might be worth an extra few dollars to reduce that risk, don't you think?

 

[photonboy]

Be very careful with any company you don't know. There are many companies from China and other places which make cheap quality, even DANGEROUS products.

Go to an online store such as NCIX and see what they offer.

Here is a beautiful 1TB (930GB usable), 2.5" passport drive from Western Digital (Canadian link) for about $115 CDN: http://www.ncix.com/products/index.php?sku=56057&vpn=WDBACX0010BBK-NESN&manufacture=Western%20Digital%20WD%20Retail&promoid=1310

It is USB 2 and 3 compatible.

**I bought my dad an eSATA adapter for his laptop. We discovered that it was no faster for his usage of transferring pictures as the pictures being transferred were slower due to their file size than the 32MB/second maximum speed of the USB hard drive. This was a limitation of the hard drive's speed. 3.5" drives are faster than 2.5" drives.

This should take you to a link of hard drive enclosures: http://www.ncix.com/products/index.php?minorcatid=1027

***Please note that I'm unsure if your page automatically changes to a US version if you are in the United States. Canadian pages have a red maple leaf in the upper-left next to the large NCIX.

 

[ravisghosh]

The problem is i'm located in India and not there is no esata enclosure available here. If I buy on ebay, only few sellers ship to India with appropriate shipping charges. So I'm left with very few options.

@CompulsiveBuilder - If the enclosure fails in case of cheap enclosures, will the already data stored on the disk be affected or the one which is being transferred at the time of failure?

 

[ravisghosh]

There is only this Shentek which has eSATAp port apart from DeLOCK!