Reliable usb hard drive external enclosure 2.5"?

Hi,

I've bought 2 $9.95 usb 2.0 enclosures, vantec and meritline, and they just don't connect reliably with my macbook pro. Are these chipsets all the same, or are they made too fragile? Because after a few months, they disconnect from my laptop in the middle of file transfers, etc. I don't believe that it's my hard drive that's the problem.

What model #s and brands are known to be reliable? Do I need to get a rugged hard drive enclousre? Is there any rugged enclosure besides LaCie? They are so expensive.

Thanks!

 

I think the apriteck (sp) is a reliable one

 

Because they are 10 dollar enclosures. You aren't going to get platinum coated enclosure for 10 bucks mate. Now I've never had a problem with Vantec enclosures, in fact I have a ton of 10-20 dollar ones, used on a Mac and PC. Never had a problem. How old is your MBP? Something might be up with your USB ports? Some laptops don't have enough on 5v rail to power all USB devices.

 

I found this one on ebay for $15.95 and I bought five of them. They're really nice.

Ultra ULT40243 Aluminus Hard Drive Enclosure – 2.5” SATA to USB 2.0, Brushed Aluminum at TigerDirect.com

 

Older Macbooks are notorious for not supplying enough power through USB so that might be your problem.

Have you tried these enclosures on other laptops or powered the with a Y cable or external power supply?

 

Those look nice; and as long as they work properly, they're an excellent deal for all you get.

The only misleading statement is that you can stand them up--which is unlikely since the cables won't allow that.

 

I think by "stand up" they mean along the slightly concave long end, as they guy in the video does near the end.