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Home >> Photography >> Digital External
Hard Drive Cases
With the recent upgrade in computers, my new desktop has dual 74 GB SATA drives that run at 10k rpm, making for a very sweet and responsive system (for now that is until the software developers bring out new products to tax today’s state of the art systems). The interesting (nefarious?) manner in which product makers play footloose and fancy with technical specifications means though that my 74 GB drives actually end up being less than 70 GB each of usable storage space - remember the days when you bought a 29 inch TV and discovered that it was missing a few inches, or how about a 21 inch CRT that actually only offers 19 inches in usable viewing real estate? With CD-R and DVD-R backups, I’m doing okay for storage now and ultimately, I plan to add another SATA hard drive around 250 GB in capacity inside the desktop tower. After that I only have space for one more hard drive inside the box and for security and safety measures I’d want to go with external backup drives instead of maxxing out the box. There
are plenty of ready made external drives available on the market and
one of the more interesting ones is made by Maxtor with their One-Touch
drives that provide an easy one-button push backup of your internal
drive data. It has already saved the bullocks of Gary Fong (as described
at one of his web sites), the big time American wedding photographer
who spends a large amount of time in
Coincidentally, one of my favorite political writers, David Frum, (a Canadian who spends a large amount of time in the US) also suffered through a Mac notebook crash (two or three by now), which makes me wonder in general how reliable notebooks are, as I type this out on my Toshiba notebook that has become my day-to-day computer (the new desktop is now pretty much a dedicated Photoshop machine). Consider that most of the digital wallets on the market are just notebook hard drives with a flash card reader connected to it and when you hear about all the failures of these devices, well it does make you wonder does it not? Even the vaunted Apple iPod is just a Toshiba notebook hard drive with a fancy, flat Sony lithium-ion battery to power it. Although hard drives fail in notebooks too, digital wallets seem to fail more so and I wonder if it doesn't have to do with heat build up when there is no fan to circulate cool air around. My Toshiba P20 has fans that kick in when the internal heat reaches a certain point, but what about all those thin profile notebooks (yes, I know the Centrino CPU is suppose to reduce power and heat significantly, but that does not address the heat issue for the hard drive)? External hard drives come in a few different flavours with USB 2, Firewire and both USB and Firewire connections offered. Buying one ready-made means paying in the neighborhood of $450 for a 250 GB Maxtor One-Touch. Buy that 250 GB drive alone and it would cost about $300, so the extra $150 buys you the enclosure and software to allow for the easy backup feature. (All prices in CAN $). External cases also come in various sizes from 2.5 inches meant to be used with notebook sized hard drives, to the standard desktop sized drives at 3.5 inches, to 5 inch sized cases that will allow mounting CD and DVD drives. You would certainly want to review the specifications for these ready made hard drives as there can be significant performance differences in how the drives are configured. Maxtor’s smaller One-Touch drives (80 to 120 GB) in USB 2 configuration come with a paltry 2 MB cache whereas the Firewire version meant for Macs come with 8 MB caches. Now being a computer dimwit, there may be a technical reason why the USB 2 version comes with a 2 MB cache only, but since USB 2 has a theoretical speed advantage over the original Firewire connection, I do not understand why the PC user buying a USB 2 only model should be disadvantaged. There are other brands besides Maxtor to look at, so don’t let my continued mentioning of this brand sway you from looking at others since I myself tend to favour Western Digital hard drive products. Now, many of us already have spare hard drives that are lying around doing nothing and it seems like a big waste to not utilize so much available storage. Looking in my computer junk box I see old but still good modems, sound cards, wires and cables, and four or five hard drives salvaged from too many computer upgrades done over the years. I still have my 1.6 GB hard drive leftover from my original Pentium 120, circa 1995. I don’t know what I would ever do with a tiny 1.6 GB hard drive since just loading my most basic applications with Win XP today would take me to around 10 GB of storage space required without even considering all my files accumulated over the years. Heck, even my MP3 files would more than max out that old hard drive and I’m not even close to digitizing all of my music collection. (Update: a friend's original Pentium hard drive crashed and my old 1.6 drive was donated to resurrect the ancient computer). However, I do have a couple of 20 GB, two 40 GB drives in the junk box and a 120 GB drive recovered from the older Pentium 4 that has since been retired to be used by the kids for their educational games and occasional DVD playback. I swapped the 120 for a 40 GB drive into the old desktop since the kids aren’t exactly going to be power users of their computing resources. I could have tossed in one of the old 20 GB drives but I’ve lived with that configuration during a hard drive crash a couple of years ago and that 20 GB drive proved to be an incredible piece of excrement that slowed the whole system down to intolerable levels. The other 20 GB drive, which I cannot recall how I came to own it, is of similar quality. Brand names cover most of the major companies of Quantum, Maxtor, Western Digital, IBM and there’s probably a Seagate in there somewhere too. To make
use of the still current and capable 120 GB drive, I went to a local
computer parts shop to purchase a 3.5 inch external hard drive case.
This is a very simple, made in
Connect the two cables, insert the hard drive into the space well, secure the drive with the retaining screws, pop the two-piece case back together and you’re done. Time required is all of 5 minutes. If you’re using Windows XP, no software is required to be installed since the OS will detect the connected hard drive automatically and make it available. Windows 2000 and older as well as certain Mac OS versions require the included driver software to be installed. Everything seemed to be going swimmingly as I put together the case and connected it to my desktop. Win XP detected the new hardware and began to configure it, but after a few seconds a message popped up that indicated a problem with the hardware and that it may not work properly. Sure enough, trying to find it proved futile because the OS would not recognize it as a hard drive. I tried it with my notebook, but same problem, initial detection but non-configuration and inaccessible. So much for going swimmingly. I went on the ‘net searching for installation clues because I did not want to accept that my hard drive was dead and hence the cause of the problem. Unfortunately, I could not find a damn clue from any of the external hard drive reviews I read. Then a dim light bulb clicked on in my head about jumper switches.
IDE devices (hard and optical drives) have jumper switches that require a plug to be inserted into the correct position depending on how you’re going to use the device. There are usually settings for Master, Slave and Cable Select, which is suppose to be like an auto detect setting. As it turned out my 120 GB drive was set to Cable Select and while suitable inside the old desktop, not suitable for the external enclosure. Moving the jumper to Slave did not work either and with only one choice left, I gave a little Hail Mary and set the jumper for Master and then plugged it into the computer. Success! Recognition by Windows and access to all of the space. A quick format and repartitioning of the drive space took a few minutes and I was able to start backing up data in short order.
Other comments about the external enclosure itself. I noticed that the higher quality enclosures are made of aluminum, which apparently helps to dissipate heat build up from the hard drive. The principal seems to be to make the enclosure itself a heat sink and in looking at some of those metal enclosures with its grooves and ribbing, they are not dissimilar to heat sinks used in audio power amps. This would give me more piece of mind than my predominantly plastic build enclosure. The better enclosures also have on/off buttons to shut down the hard drive, which makes it convenient in being able to turn off the drive whenever you finish backing up whereas I have to unplug the power cable from mine. Otherwise, whether you use the drive or not, it is always on and spinning, adding wear and tear and reducing its life expectancy. Which leads to a caveat that most hard drives only have five-year warrantees and despite the growing popularity of using external hard drive enclosures, this is still not as good or as stable as using CD-Rs and DVD-Rs for ultimate backup. An external hard drive does provide safety from not being a physical part of the desktop system, so you can backup then turn it off or unplug it and it won’t get fried if your power supply goes poof. But today, tomorrow, five years from now, or ten years from now, it could go poof on its own. The other major use of external hard drives is not as a backup device, but as part of a library that provides fast and ready access to all of one’s files rather than having to sort through a stack of CD-Rs or DVD-Rs. One’s desktop, or notebook, may already be maxxed out with the largest hard drives available, but it still won’t be enough for many photographers. External drives provide cost effective solutions to keep on using a perfectly good computer without having to buy a whole ‘nother computer for storage. As for me, I foresee another external case in my future, one made of aluminum with its own on/off switch that I will move my 120 GB drive into while using the cheaper enclosure with the other 40 GB drive lying in the junk box. External
Hard Drive Cases Part II In my first report about external hard drive cases, I expressed some concern that the generic case that I bought was lacking in some features to make it a really good external case for a backup device. Specific concerns were no power button to turn on and off at will and no fan to address heat build up, which I suspect is the culprit behind a lot of portable drive failures (subjective impression only, not objective based on empirical data). Since I only used the external drive for backup purposes, it did not seem enough to worry about as the drive would only be powered long enough to copy new files over and then unplugged until the next time I backed up. However, a little shopping trip to Costco with my wife had my eye roving around the computer section to see what kind of deals were available. Low and behold, there was a pile of external hard drive cases that appeared to address both my concerns and for not much more than what the generic case cost me.
The case comes with a detachable IEC type power cable, a USB 2 cable, CD of drivers for older Win OS’, and a small bag of screws for mounting drives inside the case. The case itself has a small fan unit at the back that runs very quietly. Slots at the bottom of the case allow for mounting various sized drives with the closest slots suitable for the standard 3.5-inch hard drive case. Large 5¼ drives can also be mounted along the side walls, just as one would do inside a CPU case.
The front of the case is a matte black plastic mold that pulls apart from the main chassis. After that a metal top cover is pulled off to provide access to the innards to mount a drive. Plug the power and IDE cables to your drive then position for mounting. You then use some of the screws to mount the drive to the bottom plate. In my case, I took my Western Digital 120 GB drive from the generic case into the ADS case and used two supplied thin screws to secure the drive to the bottom plate. The drive has four bottom screw holes, but only two screws were available with the case that fit properly. Two seemed secure enough, so no worries. The IDE and power cables could have been a bit longer too though, but I got it hooked up well enough. After installing the drive, replace the metal top plate and secure with four more screws then slide the plastic front cover back in. Plug in all appropriate cables to the computer and for power and then see if your drive still lives. In my case, my notebook immediately detected the powered on drive and provided access. It was rather telling that not all USB interfaces are created equally and it always seemed to be a sweet time before the generic hard drive case became detected by either of my computers. Also, compared to the generic case, the ADS seemed to provide snappier response and access to the files. This subjective impression is with the same hard drive unit used in both cases, so I don’t think I’m dreaming the performance difference.
As big as the ADS case is, it can be stacked thanks to the rear mounted and rear exhausting fan unit. My original plan was to purchase another internal 250 GB SATA hard drive, but with the need for security and redundancy, I’m likely to pick up another case along with a hard drive between 160 to 250 GB in size for more backup and storage down the road. Having an external hard drive does not save you from hard drive crashes in itself, but it can protect you from hard drive crashes or power surges inside the computer that can toast your valuable data. A review of an older ADS case found on the Internet indicated pretty slow access times compared to dedicated external hard drives such as the Maxtor One Touch drives. Of course I have no idea if ADS, in making modest cosmetic changes to their case, also improved the performance of the USB interface to provide faster access. At this rate I do not expect to be able to verify because I do not plan to add a One Touch or other similar product to my system, preferring the better economy of the ADS plus regular hard drive for my usage. The way things are going in the digital darkroom and hearing tales of woe by others of crashes and CD failures tends to make one paranoid. In my entire history of using computers, from a teenager to current, I have only experienced one hard drive failure, but you need only be hit once to understand that the odds favor another strike to you again sometime down the road. It might not be an outright physical failure, but a power surge or other event beyond your control, e.g., CPU power supply meltdown, which can also toast your drives and all your data. External appears to be the best compromise between security, speed, access and convenience. But keep in mind that this is only as an adjunct to more stable backups such as DVD-R. While many fret about the long term viability of DVD-R and especially CD-R, my take is don’t be so bloody cheap to consider a plastic and aluminum disc worth about a buck and change and expect this to be a 100 year archival medium. Forget the marketing hype and backup data every so often and when something newer and better comes along, transfer your files over while the old media is still a viable format. Sure I’d like my CD-R and DVD-R backups to last decades, but I’m not that silly and really now, don’t you think that something superior isn’t going to show up in the next decade or two that will make optical discs look like the 20th Century’s vinyl? |
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Correspondence & About this website Copyright © 1998-2008 Edwin Leong |
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An
external hard drive case is hardly an exciting and sexy piece of equipment
to write about, but I’d thought I’d do a very quick piece on it because
of a minor little thing I came across when I bought such an enclosure
to use with a spare hard drive.
Opening
up the case I bought, that is as generic as cases can get, revealed
a green and red LED window at the front of the case with a small circuit
board at the rear of the case as the hard drive controller. A short
40 pin IDE as well as the hard drive’s power cable come out of the
circuit board. 
So,
that is my little story and my little contribution for those wanting
to recycle old hard drives into viable storage backup devices, or
even purchasing a new hard drive and saving a few bucks over the ready-made
ones from Maxtor, Western Digital, 
The
case that caught my attention is one from ADS, a brand I had never
come across before. It is quite large because it is 5¼ compatible
for optical drives, but can accommodate smaller 3.5 inch hard drives.
The physical size is around four times as large as the generic case. 
The
generic case is still in use, but now with an older and much smaller
20 GB drive that I’ll probably use for storing my MP3 files, or
backing up files from the notebook while the ADS case will be used
with my desktop system.