looking for a HardDrive enclosure that is not a piece of crap?

[Bill_Bright]

Do you know or can recommand some affordable one allowing us to easily swap PATA and SATA drives at will, by any chance?

This one supports both SATA and IDE (PATA) but I have no personal experience with it.

[ruinebabine]

Hi Bill. Sorry to be late on my reply.

Thanks for your suggestion, I am investigating it and will compare with my other options, in regard to my limited budget.

Thanks again for your helping time here.

[Bill_Bright]

Good luck. Let us know what you decide on, then once installed, how you like it.

[ruinebabine]

Yes, sure I will at time!

[Raza0007]

Slightly off topic but related to external drive enclosures. Does anyone know of an enclosure that can power down a drive if the drive is inactive for a certain amount of time? I know this option is available if you buy a branded external drive, like from WD or Seagate etc, but when you buy the drive and enclosure separately you do not get this facility. I have two enclosures one Vantec NexStar 3 and other a similar looking no name made in China. Both do not power down the drive even if the drive is not accessed for hours. You can feel the drive spinning inside and the enclosure remains warm to touch.

Also, if someone know of a software utility that can help in this situation. Let me know.

[Raza0007]

Originally Posted by Raza0007

Also, if someone know of a software utility that can help in this situation. Let me know.

Answering my own question: HDDScan has a utility to set "power management" for external usb based hard drives, provided the hard drive inside the enclosure supports the feature. Most older hard drives support the "power management" feature, while most newer ones also support "advanced power management".

[ruinebabine]

Originally Posted by Bill_Bright

This one supports both SATA and IDE (PATA) but I have no personal experience with it.

I was and is always interesred to buy this one when budget will be more healthy, but for now I will simply use this adaptor kit to directly transfer my old ATA hard drives' data on on my new PC (only sata and usb connections are available on this ASUS crossfire IV formula MB).

But I would also be interested to know of any user's experience with this particular dock or some other similar one...