Anyone know of a good price on a USB 2.0 External Enclosure?

[taxman150]

Looking for a good quality USB 2.0 enclosure to turn an internal drive into an external. Any assistance would be appreciated.

Thank you,

Mike

[BuddhaTB]

Is this USB2.0 inclosure for a hard drive or a CD/DVD drive?

[Ian]

http://www.compgeeks.com/details.asp?invtid=ME-320U2

[Ian]

Here's that aluminum one at CompUSA:

http://www.compusa.com/products/product ... ode=293573

[taxman150]

It would be for a standard sized cd-rw drive.

Thank you

[taxman150]

Thanks very much for all of the info. I greatly appreciate it.

I checked around on ebay and yahoo shopping and found the same enclosure from Computer Geeks being offered by many people. However, the price from Computer Geeks with shipping is the best.

My only questions are would the difference between the casing being made of aluminum (as in the case of the Comp USA version) vs. metal/plastic for this version matter - especially if both have fans?

Second, the Computer Geeks version says it supports transfers up to 60 mbps on the USB 2.0 port. Shouldn't it be 480mbps as is the standard with other USB 2.0 devices? Does this even matter - meaning will the drive even support a transfer this high?

Thank you in advance.

[BuddhaTB]

Second, the Computer Geeks version says it supports transfers up to 60 mbps on the USB 2.0 port. Shouldn't it be 480mbps as is the standard with other USB 2.0 devices? Does this even matter - meaning will the drive even support a transfer this high?

Most of the current CD-RW drives support UDMA Mode 2 (ATA33), which means it supports up to 33mbps. That in itself is already overkill as transfer speeds between the computer and the drive will never reach that limit. So in a sense, 60mbps is more than enough for your CD-RW drive.

Here's a link to provide further information on why there are no ATA66 or ATA100 CD-RW drives.
http://www.cdrlabs.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=6673

[M17]

1 byte = 8 bits

480 megabits per sec = 60 megabytes per sec.
usb2.0 is planty fast for cdrw drives.

[taxman150]

Thank you for all of the responses to my original post. After researching it a little bit more on my own, I realized that some of the sellers on ebay were mixing up their terminology and that was part of the reason why I was confused.

The biggest issue I still have after looking into this further is that even though the theoretical data transfer maximums of 480Mb/60MB/sec. with a USB 2.0 external case should be more than sufficient for cd-rw's using the 33.3MB/sec. standard, it doesn't appear that all of the external cases can handle sustained data transfers at those levels.

I found reviews of the Atech Digilog ME-320 on Burnoutpc.com and extremeoverclocking.com and while the reviewers were impressed by the unit, one said that it only got to about half of the theroretical speed transfer levels when testing a hard drive and the other said its performance lagged a bit. Maybe this would be different for a cd-rw and maybe sustained data transfer levels are not relevant when it only takes about two and a half minutes to burn a cd-r with a 52X24X52 drive. I don't know as I'm pretty new to all of this. This model is certainly the most affordable one out there and is the one that you can find a ton of people selling on ebay.

I've been deciding between this Atech Digilog model, a generic CompUSA aluminum case version, the ADS Technologies USBX-804 and the newer Belkin F5U209. I'm leaning towards the ADS version as I've read a number of positive comments on it (including some from this forum) and it is the only one that provides a rating on sustained data transfer levels - at 35MB/sec., which should guarantee great performance with a cd-rw.

I would be interested in the Belkin as well, but it was only released a few months ago and information and detailed specifications on it are hard to find on the internet. The Atech Digilog model can be had for $46 at Computergeeks.com, while the Belkin and ADS models are going for $100 at my local Compusa and are probably available cheaper online. The aluminum Compusa generic goes for $69.99.

I'm probably making too much of this, I'm sure that all of them will probably work fine for my purposes. I will probably end up going with the ADS model. However, if anyone has any experience using any of the other models, I'd appreciate hearing any comments.

Thank you and Happy New Year.