USB 2.0 / Firewire Drive Enclosure Recommendations?

[Woodie]

Looking to purchase a 300GB Maxtor SATA drive and use it for my iTunes library. Any recommendations on an external enclosure Firewire / USB2.0 box/
Looking for something nice and quiet

TIA

This looks like a pretty good deal
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?sourceid=qIa2Q25KUY6eAjz4hl2L&siteid=0037550214&CMP=AFC-AFFIL&Sku=TSD-300M&EdpNo=1121653&SRCCODE=BEFREE

[Luca]

That's a pretty good price as long as you make sure to mail in that rebate. Otherwise you can find 300 GB hard drives for around $115 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.asp?Manufactory=&PropertyCodeValue=353%3A7797&PropertyCodeValue=0&PropertyCodeValue=0&PropertyCodeValue=0&PropertyCodeValue=0&description=&MinPrice=&MaxPrice=&SubCategory=14&Submit=Property).

The hard part is finding an enclosure that takes SATA hard drives. Most use an IDE interface, not SATA, and it's hard to find a high-quality SATA enclosure. In fact, you might spend LESS money to get a full-priced IDE hard drive and an IDE-compatible enclosure! The drive you linked to is a SATA hard drive.

IDE enclosures are pretty cheap, especially the USB 2-only ones. Firewire is faster than USB 2 for sustained transfers (despite USB 2's slightly higher burst transfer rate), but USB 2 will still work fine. Here is NewEgg's list (http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.asp?Manufactory=&PropertyCodeValue=538%3A7123&PropertyCodeValue=0&PropertyCodeValue=0&PropertyCodeValue=0&PropertyCodeValue=0&description=&MinPrice=&MaxPrice=&SubCategory=92&Submit=Property) of 3.5" (hard drive sized) external enclosures. "Internal Interface" needs to be the same as the hard drive you buy, while "External Interface" is what connects to your computer.

Oh, and read the user reviews! Some of these enclosures are really, really cheap, and a lot are not very good. Go for one that has lots of positive reviews.

[bigglesworth]

try cooldrives.com. They have many possible combinations of drive and connection. I have a firewire dual drive enclosure with FW400 and 800 support and a built in fan that is serving me well. Lots of stuff on sale as well

[scrouds]

you don't want a SATA hard drive. in fact, all but the newest SATA hard drives are PATA with a bridge to SATA. so it's no faster, and just adds a bottle neck.

The other thing is that most enclosures use PATA to connect a device.

Otherwise, getting an external hard drive was the best thing i've ever done. Can't recommend my case tho, because it has a fan and isn't so quiet. Good luck.