Help on which 2.5" External Enclosure to get

Ok I'm not sure which External Enclosure should I get for my 2.5"
notebook harddrive

My harddrive is a 2.5" Seagate Momentus Serial ATA150 5400.3 120gb

I was thinking maybe this External Enclosure might be right
Vantec NexStar3 NST-260SU-BK

http://www.amazon.com/Vantec-NexStar3-Aluminum-eSATA-Enclosure/dp/B000MW2NCO/ref=sr_1_1/002-0749346-3746456?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1184949659&sr=8-1


if I'm wrong then please tell me which one is the right one for my harddrive

 

That one will work fine

 

Wrong. That's an eSATA enclosure. How do you know his notebook has an eSATA port on it? 99.9% of notebooks do not. Not very good advice. Further, you don't know how he's intends to use it. USB and Firewire interfaces can provide power to run the drive. eSATA cannot. He'll have to lug around a power supply for that enclosure if he's using eSATA.

I like this enclosure myself:
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/on-the-go
If your notebook has a Firewire port, consider using that instead of USB. It's a much faster interface. Forget about eSATA if you're using it "on the go" since eSATA will require an external power supply.

 

It is also USB 2.0.

I have that exact NexStar 3 enclosure and I love it. I have an 80GB 5400RPM drive in there and it works perfectly fine through USB. I never tried eSATA.

 

I have that enclosure, so I'll clarify a couple of your misconceptions from first-hand experience.

First off, it can be used with USB 2.0 if he has no eSATA port. Secondly, if he does have an eSATA port, he does not need to "lug around a power supply". He just needs to plug in the eSATA cable and also plug in the USB cable to draw power. The enclosure does not come with a AC adapter as none is required.

Do you really need to sell your enclosure that badly that you need to pump up your product without the facts?

 

Also, Firewire 400 (90%+ out there) is not much faster than USB 2.0 unless transfering large files.

There have been several lengthy threads on this so search please for more details.

here are a couple recent ones:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=140743&highlight=external+enclosure+firewire+usb
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=125400&highlight=external+enclosure+firewire+usb

 

ok thank you guys for answering

but the reason I'm getting the Vantec NexStar3 NST-260SU-BK

is that my harddrive is Serial ATA150 & not IDE

IDE harddrives only has Enclosure for 2.0 USB Connection

and I really don't know if my Serial ATA150 will support Enclosure that are
2.0 USB Connection.

 

No problem. You can get drive enclosures if you really want with just USB 2.0 that supports SATA150 drives, but for a few extra dollars there's nothing wrong with having the eSATA option available too. You can even get USB 2.0+Firewire 400 drive enclosures that support SATA150 drives if that's the way you want to go. I've been happy with the Vantec enclosure.

 

Ok, so carrying / attaching two cables is easier than using a single cable. Ok, I get it now.

Not my enclosure, just making a recommendation. Buy it or not, I don't much care either way.

Riiiight. Because people buy multi-hundred Gigabyte external disks to transfer small 100 kb files around.

That's like saying "A Core 2 Extreme is not much faster than a Pentium III 600, unless you're doing CPU-intensive activities". Well gee, ya think??

 

Even with 2-4 MB files (mp3s) I couldn't tell much difference when I compared a few months ago. Firewire was 'marginally' faster. I don't remember the exact number but I think it was around 30,000 files that time. I have a text where I kept the results I will see if I can find it.
This is pretty much all I transfer (>100,000 files to a new drive yesterday). Most average users are not moving large files so they will not see much difference. I sometimes move 3-5 GB files (firewire was about 30% faster when i tested them) but I dont do those often enough to give up the versitility of usb.

Wasn't trying to trash you or your thoughts. You are correct but I wanted to point out that most users will not see a large difference or notice the difference.

 

It's a small price to pay to maximize the performance of the external hard drive. I don't mind spending a few seconds to plug in another cable in order to save minutes transferring large amounts of data.