Advice on external HD enclosure

[GGD]

Black wrote:
It's a function of the drive and energy saver settings, not the enclosure.

Not true, the bridge board chipset in the enclosure can also be a factor. Some of my FW enclosures would not spin down but the same drive in another enclosure would spin down. I think in my situation the Oxford chipsets supported spin down and Initio did not.

[olnacl]

:agree:In checking a few external cases I have in order to respond to this post, I found the Rosewill (don't remember the model number) keeps on spinning while the Vantec I mentioned and both My Book externals spin down immediately upon putting the computer to sleep.

[michaelb]

I have used the original mini stack. We had issues with it and with the spin down, and the fan does make noise. My vague memory is latter versions may be slightly better at those things now. But in any case, I like my other OWC cases better, and they spin down and spin up just fine, and have no fans at all. I have decided not to buy cheaper drive cases anymore either, since I just don't think it is worth saving a few bucks on a drive case (ok, the cheap cases are less than half the OWCs, but I don't use them anymore, so that was a waste of money mostly, even if only a waste of a little money).

I do particularly like having one with FW800 and USB, so again, for me it is worth spending the extra $20 or so for FW800. If you ever want to use the case to transfer huge amounts of data, 300 gig +, the FW800 will cut that time in half or more, so minutes instead of hours when you buy a new compute and are setting it up.

[Mini 9]

This one seems nice.

http://tinyurl.com/yl547b4