External SATA to USB 2 enclosure

I've seen a lot of threads about external hard drives and enclosures, but does anyone have some reccomendations for a realitively cheap, decent looking 2.5" SATA to USB 2.0 enclosure that is powered by ONE USB cable? I've been looking all over and I can only find ones that either have terrible reviews or have an A/C power cabe or a Y USB cable. My WD Scoprio is coming today, and I want to use my current Hitachi 160GB 7200rpm as another external. Or would RAID be the way to go?

 

I have one of these IcyBox IB-266 enclosures. It plugs into one USB port on the computer but the cable splits to feed a separate power socket on the enclosure. That way the HDD is powered when it is using eSATA and the USB cable is not connected. At the moment it has a WD2500BEVS inside it. According to Tom's Hardware the 320GB WD may have a higher maximum power consumption, but WD provide a jumper option to reduce the spin-up power.

John

 

I'm going to put the 320GB in my laptop. The drive I want to put in an enclosure is a Hitachi TravelStar 7k200 160GB. If an enclosure has an seperate USB cable that's used for power, do you think my 160GB would make due with just one USB (I wouldn't use the other one). I also have a WD Passport 250GB drive. I really want an enclosure that works like that. I guess what I'm asking is this: does a TravelStar 7k200 160BG drive draw more amps that a single UBS connection can supply. If not, I can buy an enclosure that comes with two USB cables (a power and a data) and just not use the power one (rely on the power through the data cable).

 

The hard drive requires just about 500mA of current, perhaps a bit more. So if USB port isn't perfect (most are not, and output just under 500mA) you will not be able to power the drive.

If you can build your own USB enclosure with a 4200RPM drive, you may have a chance to only need 1 USB port. But for data safety sake...get one that can use 2 USB ports for power.

 

What about the Passport drives, though? They're 5400rpm and powered off a single USB. Looking at the data sheet, it looks like the 7k200 drive needs 5.5W startup/max current (I don't know how many volts HDs run at so I don't know the mA).

 

According to Tom's Hardware (link above) the maximum power draw of the 7k200 is in the middle of the chart. It's a little lower than the WD2500BEVS.

In recent years I've not had problem with notebooks being unable to power an external HDD from a single USB port. Some of the older 2.5" HDDs or the electronics on the old enclosures took more power than one port could easily deliver. I've just checked 5 different 2.5" HDDs, all in different brands of enclosure and all could run off one USB port of a Toshiba R500 (which as a very light notebook, might have marginal power to the USB ports).

John

 

Ok thanks a lot. I was looking at the Eagle one with the big vent on top. My neighbor has that one and it looks real sturdy.