Recommend me an External HD box.

[Niall]

Looking for a little advice.

Current situation:
One 320GB drive in a good quality FW400 box (http://safecom.cn/code/sub/category.asp?prdid=335&subcatid=43). Used for TM backups.
Two 500GB drives in a poor quality FW800 box, except the FW800 never worked right, and it has only one working FW400 port. Also loud. Used for media archive and technical library, except that its not actually backed up to anything. Approx 90% full.

Desired situation:
One 2TB drive from scan.co.uk, in the existing FW400 box. As a backup for...
One 2TB drive in a new FW800 box.

It looks cheaper to buy the drives separately from the box, especially as no-one sells a 2TB external (cept as raid boxes).

So, can anyone recommend a good quality empty box for one 3.5in HDD with FW800. Preferably aluminium and quiet, and ideally with FW400 and USB. This one (http://www.mapower.com.tw/mapower/Product.asp?CateID=289&LineID=42) looks good, but I cannot find it for sale in the UK.

Any assistance greatly appreciated.

[Ryan]

I like the enclosures from Macally (macally.com) but I don't know anything about overseas availability.

[PB PM]

Also have a look at Vantec's NexStar 3 line, which come in several flavors, ones with USB2 and dual FW400 (for linking multiple drives) supporting IDE (ATA), USB2, FW400 and eSATA, which support SATA drives and USB2, FW400 and FW800, which also support SATA.

[Eugene]

I don't know about overseas but in general it is no longer cheaper to buy a separate HDD and enclosure. The external HDDs from Seagate and Western Digital are often on sale here for the exact same price as the bare drives.

[Brad]

I have two aluminum USB2.0/FireWire 800/eSATA enclosures from CoolDrives.com that look good, perform well, and are nice and quiet.

They're a tad expensive, though. The "sale" prices fluctuate pretty regularly and they have other models that are always cheaper.

One of mine is fan-less (I've had for a couple years) and the other has a fan (I just got a couple months ago).

Without fan:
http://cooldrives.com/esata-firewire-800-enclosure-case-external.html
http://us.st12.yimg.com/us.st.yimg.com/I/cooldrives_2045_6606835

With fan:
http://cooldrives.com/ontbsatoes28.html
http://lib.store.yahoo.net/lib/cooldrives/sata-enclosure-onnto-35f1.jpg

[Brad]

Gah. Scratch my suggestion. After some digging, it looks like it's a US-only store.

[Niall]

Thanks for all the responses guys, this is great.

I have just realised that the existing drive case is ATA only, so I'm going to need two SATA firewire boxes.

This is not a problem, as the one I liked to previously is cheap and available with SATA.

Eugene, you are correct, I have heard that advice before, but can you advise me of any 2TB drives for sale in external boxes now? Anything less than this will not future proof me for more than a few months.

Really wanting a Macally case, but can't find them anywhere.

Am I just dumb for wanting FW800?

[Eugene]

Well if you really want futureproof, you should get an expandable RAID solution like a ReadyNAS or Drobo.

[Niall]

Yep, I thought about a drobo for a while, but ruled it out for the following reasons.

No possibility of offsite backups (take a box out to the garage each week).
'Black box' syndrome. If I don't understand it, I don't trust it.
Size & weight - I'm looking for something more portable than a RAID box, for certain.

Plus, swapping the internal drives for 4TB ones in a few years is all the future-proofing I need.

Any other suggestions?