External HDD Enclosure/Flash Drive recommendations?

Hey all, I'm preparing to make the jump from a desktop to a notebook, and am looking in preserving my 500gb (currently in my desktop) for future use. It's a WD Caviar 7200rpm 16mb cache drive (SATA), I'm quite happy with it.

Was hoping someone could recommend me a decent enclosure I can use for it.

What I'm looking for:
- Not extremely expensive (prefer to spend no more than 50, but will consider a bit more if it's worth it).
- Preferably houses more than one drive, or can hotswap.
- Has cooling.
- eSata if possible, I can deal with USB though.

I don't care if it looks sleek or needs a power source, that's fine with me.

Sidequestion: I saw a Western Digital external HD, 750gb for $98 at a Target on clearance. Think it's worth picking up? Sounds like a great deal to me. They had like 15 of them, so I'm hoping it will go down in price again before long.

I'm also looking for a good fast flash drive, 4+ gigs if anyone knows a good deal on one.

 

If you want to hotswap, the ideal is one of thermaltake's BlacX. It can only fit one drive but it will take any 2.5" or 3.5" drive and supports eSATA and usb. Some ppl might not like having the HDD exposed like that but I've been using it for 6 months no probs, even play my games installed on it. And swaping drives is easy, just disconnect it thru windows, turn off the power on the Blacx and press down the lever and the drives pops out.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817153071

 

That looks interesting. About HDD safety, what do you store them in? I'm assuming you don't leave one docked all the time, seems dust would be a problem more than normal.

 

I have 2 docks full time 24/7 with drives in each one. One for my desktop and another for laptop. I only take it out when I travel or when I need to hotswap with another drive.

As for dust I guess it depends on where you are. I don't have much of a dust problem so it isn't a problem, plus the connections are totally hidden from external view (with 2.5" drives there might be exposure not sure never used). For safety reasons when hotswapping, it doesn't mean that the drive can be removed while it's connected (definite no-no) - just means you can unplug the eSATA plugs anytime if you need to untether your laptop. I have heard of users using it thinking with this dock they can treat the HD like a usb thumb drive which is wrong.

For swapping drives main thing to remember is to disable it first in Windows, turn off the power switch on the dock, wait for the drive to spin down (few secs), then use the push-down lever on the dock to pop the drive out..then put another drive in. (The included 'manual' mainly covers installation which is a no-brainer because it's just plug'n'play and no drivers needed but not how to eject it properly.) Swapping drives on this is much easier than doing it on an enclosure. Some people just pull the drive out without using the lever and that isn't good for the HD.

Heat could be a problem but I haven't had any adverse problems from it. I use either WD or Samsung for my 3.5" drives and they don't seem to run as hot as other ones I've used before.
Tho if you don't plan on doing much swapping a closed enclosure with cooling or something like the WD passport will be more ideal than this.

 

http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.17404
http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.16550
http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.10486