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    Need to buy from Zipzoomfly. Harddrive enclosure - nexstar?

    Discussion in 'Hardware Components and Aftermarket Upgrades' started by The Fire Snake, Sep 30, 2008.

  1. The Fire Snake

    The Fire Snake Notebook Virtuoso

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    I have a Lenovo Thinkpad T61p and recently replaced the drive. I have the original 80Gb SATA 2.5" 5400rpm Fujitsu drive and want to keep it for backups. I need to buy an enclosure for it. I have some credit at Zipzoomfly and would like to use it, so I figured I would buy my enclosure there. I will mostly back up about 30GB of data to it at once, but the drive will not be plugged in continuously. I will do my backup to it and then unplug it. I will repeat the procedure about once a month.

    From reading a few threads it looks like some people like the Vantec Nexstar. What do you folks think about that brand? Should I look at something else? I want the case to have good heat dissipation, so I think an aluminum one would be good? I also need it to handle a 2.5" SATA drive and have at least USB connectivity. My laptop has a firewire port, but I was told that it would require the external drive to have an adapter. Are firewire and USB 2.0 similar speeds? I would like to use eSATA, but I don't have an eSATA port on my laptop. I heard that I can get an express card with an eSATA port but it doesn't work very well with the T61. Below are a few of the enclosures I am considering. Any help would be great. Thanks.

    Enclosure 1
    Enclosure 2
    Enclosure 3
     
    The Fire Snake, Sep 30, 2008
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  2. swarmer

    swarmer beep beep

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    Yeah I got that $15 Vantec one from zzfly. It's fine. Don't know about the other ones.

    USB performance isn't the greatest, but neither is your drive. So it should be fine. ;)

    For backup it's not worth worrying about going to eSATA to eek out better performance IMO. Unless you have eSATA built in maybe.

    For firewire, you just need a firewire enclosure... but most laptop firewire ports don't provide power as I understand it... so you'll probably need to plug it in, which is an annoyance. With USB you can get power via USB... so I recommend USB.
     
    swarmer, Sep 30, 2008
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  3. Tarentum

    Tarentum Notebook Deity

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    Vantec's ok, but sort of runs hot and isn't that reliable. The best one I've used is AMS Venus branded ones (but they're obviously more expensive than the Vantecs). It's aluminum + fairly quiet fan and it's the only case that has kept my external (which is used =a lot=) very cool. You definitely want a fan in the enclosure if you can help it.
     
    Tarentum, Sep 30, 2008
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