We hope this roundup of nine external HDD enclosures will help you save some money on an external hard disk drive. Instead of purchasing an expensive ready-made solution, you can take any internal HDD and put it into a special enclosure. The solutions we look at today accommodate 3.5" hard disk drives, support PATA and SATA HDD interfaces as well as different external interface – SATA, eSATA (external SATA), FireWire and USB 2.0.
We wrote this review to help you save some money on an external hard disk drive. Instead of purchasing an expensive ready-made solution, you can take any internal HDD and put it into a special enclosure like those that will be tested in this article.
The following table lists the enclosures about to be tested with the interface converter chip employed in each. This chip largely determines the performance of an enclosure:
View attachment 2178
Conclusion
It’s time to summarize a little. From the point of view of maximum performance, the AgeStar CFB3A1 and the Vantec NexStar3 NST-360SU enclosures proved to be the best with their SATA and eSATA interfaces, respectively. The bandwidth of these interfaces has a very small limiting effect on the performance of the installed hard disk drive. It is the Vantec NexStar3 NST-360SU that has won most of the tests, so it can be viewed as the ultimate leader, especially as it was the best among USB-connected enclosures when using its USB interface, too. On the other hand, the AgeStar CFB3A1 offers more interfaces: it has USB 2.0 and FireWire besides SATA.
It’s no wonder that the two leaders are followed by the two enclosures from AgeStar (the ICB5A and ICB5A1 models) that use a FireWire interface. This interface has repeatedly proved its superiority over USB 2.0 in practical applications despite its lower theoretical bandwidth. These devices offer a USB interface, too, to give you more connectivity freedom. It should also be mentioned that the AgeStar ICB5A1 has been better than the other model in most of the tests. So, if you need the fastest and highest-functionality HDD enclosure, choose among these devices.
The ViPowER VPA-35018 is the fastest among the enclosures that only have a USB 2.0 interface.
Of course you should not only consider the performance and functionality of a HDD enclosure, but also its design and price when you go shopping. Don’t forget that some of the tested enclosures support not one but two or more drive interfaces, which may came in handy sometimes.
