Fan vs fanless HDD enclosure

I'm looking to get a HDD enclosure with eSATA and put a 1TB drive in there for backing up my RAID0 laptop. I got my dad an Acomdata puredrive 500GB and it seems to work great, except that the exterior seems to get quite warm after the backup is complete (30-60 mins later). The majority of enclosures are passively cooled, but there are a few like the Antec MX-1 that have a fan. Those with a fan would have lower temps, but some users report that eventually the fan becomes noisy. So do I need active cooling, or will a nice aluminum enclosure be sufficient? I'm concerned about drive failure since this will be my primary backup system.

Oh, I can only get stuff from NCIX since the stores are local, and my budget is under CAD$70.
http://www.ncix.com/products/index.php?minorcatid=1027

 

You need to look at the power ratings of the HDDs you propose to use.

This chart at Toms Hardware provides a good starting place. There are many other charts in the family. The "green" HDDs are designed to have lower power consumption and less power means less heat.

I've got a couple of external aluminium enclosures with 3.5" Samsung HDDs and they never get hot.

John

 

If you're going to use it for backup only then a fanless alu enclosure will be fine.
You may need a fan on your enclosure only if you are using the external disc quasi-permanently or in hot environment.

 

I think Google produced some research saying that the temperature didn't really affect the failure rate of their hard drives a while back.

 

Thanks for all the replies. I think I was just a little paranoid about HDD failure (I've never had a failed HDD yet). I guess it should be fine to use a "green" HDD for backups, since I probably won't notice the speed difference?

Any favourite picks for enclosures?