I'm going to be getting an external drive enclosure for an extra 3.5" IDE drive I've got. The purpose of the enclosure is so that I can occasionally plug this drive into my PC and back up all my important data such as the My Documents directory and my downloaded Steam content. In other words, I won't be running any applications from it, but performance is still a consideration.

Ease of installation and plugging/unplugging is a factor as well. I'd like to be able to plug it in and not have to install any drivers or answer any prompts. I'm running Windows 2000 if that's a consideration.

Cost is also a factor. I don't want to spend a lot of money on something that's only going to be used occasionally.

So from my initial googling, I seem to have a choice between FireWire and USB2. Both are high speed, but I don't know whether I should be concentrating on one or the other, or if I'm going to see any difference between the two.

Anyone have any experience with these devices and can offer any advice?

If you're only ever going to plug it into that one system, there's not going to be a big difference. WinXP, certainly, (and 2k, too, but I have less experience there) supports FireWire in basically the same way it supports USB. For standard things (hard drives, CDROMs, etc.), there should be no additional config, but you mgiht want to check with the manufacturer to make sure they haven't done something wonky. I have this notion that FireWire hubs are going to be more expensive than USB2 hubs, but I could be wrong.

If you want to plug it into other things, there are differences. USB2 is a lot more common than FireWire these days, especially considering that it can work as USB1 as well. But FireWire doesn't have the host/device idea. You can plug host into host and device into device with no problems. (Of course, taking advantage of that may not be as easy.)

Also, note that the original FireWire spec is about the same speed as USB2. (Technically, it's 400Mbps for FW and 480 for USB2, but the greater overhead in USB seems to virtually negate that difference.) FireWire 800 is available and is twice as fast. That might be a consideration for later on.

Oh, you can also get combo enclosures that do both FireWire 400 and USB2. If you're totally unsure, you could pay a few extra dollars and get one of those. You can even buy enclosures with no drive if you want to make sure it'll be upgradable in the future.

Well, my motherboard specs say "IEEE 1394 VIA 1394 Controller supports 2 x 1394 ports" so I suppose it's not firewire 800.

Okay, here's a question. In windows 2000, if I have a USB flash card reader and I unplug it, I get that stupid "You have unplugged..." dialog box. Does that also happen with a firewire enclosure? If not, I'll definitely get firewire.

Side note: Anyone ever find a way to get rid of that dialog box in windows 2000?

Combo empty enclosures for as little as $28 at NewEgg. They even listed at least one USB2/FW800 enclosure.

If you're dealing with a hard drive, you're definitely going to have to tell the OS to remove it. It has the potential of having a lot of data unsynced. I'll agree that it should just do syncrhonous writes for small flash units, but there's no way around it for big mass storage. I know for a fact that WinXP doesn't complain when I unplug my FW DVD burner. Don't honestly know about Win2k, as I had a bug there that made my machine reboot when burning. (And I'm pretty sure that that had nothing to do with the FireWire.)

so do the two or three clicks that will remove the device from your system before pulling the plug

I don't know much about how Windows implements its filesystems, but under many versions of Unix, it's possible for the drive to appear to be totally inactive, yet not have data flushed to it. I wouldn't be at all surprised if Windows did it the same way. That is, there's no way to know if the writing is done except to tell it explicitly to finish. This is known as "lazy writing", and I've heard a lot of complaints about Microsoft's implementation of it, although I haven't investigated it enough to know what the complaints are specifically.

Regardless, just get one of the combo enclosures and buy two cables. That way you'll be able to see if one is better than the other (I doubt it), and have greater interoperability to boot.

ok. deal with lost or corrupted data, then. they didnt just throw that button in there to annoy you.

Shop By Category->External Enclosure. Set USB and FireWire to Yes. Click search. Then enter "fan" in the search within field and Go again.

They have an aluminum one with 40mm fan for $53. The Mapower KC51C1.

I would go for USB 2 if only for the fact that if I wished to use it as a file shuttle at some point, it would still work with any computer that has a USB port (1.1 or 2).

I have this one, which has options for both USB2 and FireWire as well as a fan. It's out of stock, but I highly recommend it should you find one elsewhere.

Oo, that one looks good. A bit pricey, but looks worth it. Too bad it's out of stock.

Firewire has enough power to run any 2.5" drive on any machine that has a 6-pin firewire port. USB2... Only on some systems. I also found firewire to be less CPU intensive than similar USB devices I've used. If the requirement is for an optical drive or a 3.5" HDD, then that's not much of an issue anymore since you'll need external power. I prefer cases with integrated power supplies and a standard IEC power cord (instead of wallwart)

I'd always choose Firewire over USB2.0 If you have a choice, an external enclosure with both is nice. You should also ditch 2K in favor of XP. Reality might dictate what you choose. if you need to share with people who don't have firewire, then you'll obviously need USB. Everyone I need to connect with has Firewire, so I'm safe there.

It takes 2 clicks to eject a device. Using the LEFT mouse button, click once on the tray icon and then once on the name of the device that pops up. It might take a third click to press OK *after* it's ejected on an information pop-up window.

2K and XP do not cache write operations to flash media. There *shouldn't* be a need to software-eject those volumes (but there is). At least they should make it easier, like being able to context-click on the device icon itself. Mac OS' way is a simple "eject" command on the device icon (from keyboard or mouse).

Bruno

Here's an enclosure that is a step down to the one I have. It has only a USB connection and the power switch is a bit different. Other than that, it looks to be the same quality design.

Looks good. The picture of the "USB 2.0 Driver" disk scares me, though...

Do these things need drivers installed? I thought there was a USB Mass Storage standard. Do firewire drives ever need drivers installed?

"Things to know" about these gizmos:

(1) you have to tell the OS before unplugging a mass storage device (flashcard or harddrive).

(2) USB2 and Firewire400 are approximately equal in speed, and either of them will likely seem FASTER than the drive in most laptops -- performance is generally quite good, but not always as good as a desktop machine's built-in drive can be.

(3) Some enclosures have external power supply bricks. Avoid those.

(4) Some enclosures have built-in switching supplies, and just use a standard 3-prong supply cable. Go for this kind.

(5) My favourite here is a CAD$34 USB2 generic enclosure, with built-in fan and power supply. Cheap, light, snaps together, and I just love it.

(6) My other one here is a combo USB2/FW400 unit, with external brick. Equally good performance, but a pain to move around due to the brick. It was also pricier than buying two of the cheaper units. Live and learn.

(7) All of these generally work well under Linux.

(8) Linux firewire support sucks eggs. USB2 is far more reliable. Not to say firewire doesn't work at all -- just more the case that on some systems it works, and on others it doesn't.

Cheers

Since you've got a firewire port, get a combo enclosure. Firewire is better in the sense that 10bT is better than USB1.1 on the empeg, even though USB has that 1 megabit on ethernet. However, usb is so much more compatible and cheaper than firewire, it's already won the battle for mass adoption and you'll be much better off having both in the end.

Matthew

More notes:

(1) Not all of these enclosures claim ATAPI compatibility -- ensure that you get one that can do both ATA and ATAPI -- my el-cheapo one does both, and so does my expensive one.

(2) One can mount a removable IDE drive rack into one of these enclosures, allowing the drives to be swapped in and out without dismantling it or fiddling with screws. The rack will project out the front by an extra .25" or so -- looks slightly ugly, but works and is quite versatile. For example, I sometimes remove a drive from an empeg and stuff it in to the rack to do direct drive-to-drive cloning.

(3) All of this is for 3.5" enclosures. There also exist 2.5" ones, that can optionally power the (laptop) drive directly from USB2. Sometimes this burns out the host's USB2 port due to excessive current draw on spin-up. Most of the time it doesn't.

Cheers

No good -- uses an external power brick. Pass.

The driver disks are for Win98(se) and possibly WinME.

Linux, MacOS, and probably WinXP all have generic drivers built-in to the OS.

Here is my favorite -- mmm.. price is higher than what I paid in-store, but maybe my memory is faulty. This quote won't do you much good, other than for informative purposes: PC-Cyber near my house.

Looks good, thanks for all that info. Since that unit has a built-in power supply, does it also have a fan?

Yup. small fan inside the rear beside the PSU.

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