Troubleshoot Best External Hard Drive Enclosure for 2.5 and 3.5 HDDSs

[Lightning_Brian]

Hi All,

I'm on the market to find the best external hard drive enclosure for 2.5 and 3.5 HDDs. I'm looking for a hard drive enclosure that will work great for storing images or backups of my computer. It doesn't have to be anything fancy, but I'm looking at this one right now: https://www.amazon.com/Sabrent-External-Lay-Flat-Docking-EC-DFLT/dp/B00LS5NFQ2

Price point: less than a $100.00 (US dollars)

What is needed: The ability to use both 2.5 and 3.5 HDDs, good heat reduction if possible (sometimes backups take a bit maybe an hour or two).

Does it have to be hot swappable? Nope! I more or less want to have the ability to use both 2.5 and 3.5 drives in the same external hard drive enclosure.

Tool-less or tools: doesn't matter.

Usage: mainly for backup purposes.

Highly reliable and well known would be great!

Let me know your thoughts!

Thanks!

 

[Lightning_Brian]

Another note: RAID not needed. Mainly looking for a one bay here.

 

[Kwan ST]

I bought this last year and I am very happy with it.

 

[Lightning_Brian]

Thanks!

Anyone have more great options for enclosures?

 

[Vasudev]

Transcend 2.5" inch enclosure and for desktop HDD enclosure, I just purchased a local Chinese brand from Amazon.

 

[Lightning_Brian]

What are your thoughts about these enclosures?


https://www.amazon.com/Rosewill-Enc...coding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=2VM8EVSQ060ERK016HJ9

https://www.amazon.com/Rosewill-RX3...00N1Q2M6A/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8

https://www.amazon.com/Thermaltake-...rd_wg=G5vks&psc=1&refRID=DCNSET2GT7W4HGDVJTZ1

 

[LASER_oneXM]

...3-4 weeeks ago i purchased this enclosure (in a big/popular german online shop) for a WD drive with 500GB/2,5 inch:
Fantec AluProU3-6G 2.5" (6,35cm) USB 3.0 schwarz

Some guys on a big german PC board recommended me this enclosure: it's still working fine, no problems at all.

 

[Lightning_Brian]

@LASER_oneXM thanks!! I'll look into this.

So many makes and models out there it's hard to choose!

 

[Lightning_Brian]

Hello Everyone!

I'm excited to announce that I found what I would classify as one of the leading external hard drive enclosures:

Thermaltake Max 5G Active Cooling Hard Drive Enclosure with Two 80mm Blue LED Fans USB 3.0 5.0Gbps ST0020U

Spoiler: Picture of Hard Drive Enclosure

While it does not natively house 2.5 HDDs/SSDs I have a small adapter that will make this work. I got this at a Black Friday/Cyber Monday special.

What will I be using inside of this? Well, I have gone with one WD Black 2TB Performance Desktop Hard Disk Drive - 7200 RPM SATA 6 Gb/s 64MB Cache 3.5 Inch - WD2003FZEX. I got this on sale (didn't pay full sticker price) on a one day only Black Friday early morning special. The special made the price the lowest it has ever been from the moment this HDD was released which was back in 2013. This new HDD is going to be put to good use keeping all of my backups on a great drive. I'm a WD Black fan myself, because of the nice warranty - 5 years - and no other hard drives live up to this warranty other than WD. I'll let you know how much I like the cooler!

Backup software being used: Acronis True Image 2018, AOMEI Backupper Professional latest release (free works great too, but I like the professional features), and Clonezilla latest stable release.

Why so many different pieces of backup software? Well, I don't want something to occur with one piece of software to the point that I cannot restore.

Backup process: Automatic backups created with Acronis True Image and AOMEI Backupper set to specific schedules. Clonezilla is only used as a fail safe once a month use. I for some reason cannot part ways with Clonezilla, because it saved me in the past before I even knew about AOMEI and Acronis.

Thanks for all of the input from everyone!

Sincerely,

Brian