F/U School me on USB3 ext cases and drives; OWC ministack rocks

[sekker]

I posted my dilemma earlier, I was frustrated with several USB3 external cases needing to reformat the drive to use the data when you went from internal to external.

http://forums.macresource.com/read.php?1...sg-1741480

This weekend, I decided to go ahead and make the jump. However, I purchased an OWC ministack from the garage sale (I liked the USB3/FW800/eSATA triple boot options). And it has a nice form factor including a fan.

I never delete data without having a temporary copy - just in case! - so I made a full 2.4TB dupe this week (painfully, from a USB2 connection to FW400 on an original MBP).

Turns out, that was totally unnecessary!

I installed the 3TB drive (moved from my Dell hackintosh) into the OWC ministack, turned it on, and I had all of my data in an external case - just like it was internally in the hackintosh.

I'm sure there are other drive options with this feature, but I'm pretty happy in general with OWC external drives. And this is another reason.

[Black]

My impression/experience is that a drive needing to be reformatted when moved from internal to external is the exception rather than the rule. Would be interested to hear what others think.

[sekker]

Black wrote:
My impression/experience is that a drive needing to be reformatted when moved from internal to external is the exception rather than the rule. Would be interested to hear what others think.

My experience prior to using 3TB drives has been that's easy to swap internal to external - I used to do it all the time when I had a hardware failure. Just pop the drive into an external case, and you have the data ready to use!

[WHiiP]

I've only had a problem when I tried those really cheap Touro (sp?) cases from OWC. They even mention that as a problem so I am not faulting them. But my other drives to other enclosures have been no problem.

[Black]

sekker wrote:
[quote=Black]
My impression/experience is that a drive needing to be reformatted when moved from internal to external is the exception rather than the rule. Would be interested to hear what others think.

My experience prior to using 3TB drives has been that's easy to swap internal to external - I used to do it all the time when I had a hardware failure. Just pop the drive into an external case, and you have the data ready to use!
Got it, thanks.

[sekker]

I've had trouble with the Seagate 3TB external cases, too.