Rosewill External HD Enclosure, aka "deathbox"

[Ben]

"48 hours"

So I ordered this Rosewill External SATA to USB Enclosure last week because I wanted to hook up a drive to my router (RT-N16) running DD-WRT. I can use this drive as a little network share and not have to keep my desktop PC on all the time in order to access files. So I use less power because I keep the desktop off and the 1 hard drive is directly tied to the router and is accessible from any PC on my network.

Sounds good right?

So I hooked this thing on Thursday and all seems well. I'm accessing files from it and performance seems good, the router appears to be handling it well, no issues. A couple hours later I feel the box and it is hot as well. I was able to run smartctl (to get SMART data) and the drive temp was reported at 44C. That's not too bad for a hard drive, or so I think.

Fast forward 48 hours, today, and I'm on my desktop playing some Minecraft when the hard drive starts making grinding noises. At first I thought it was a creeper or skeleton, but it goes on again and I realize its the hard drive. I take the drive out and let her cool down. I remove the disk, check the warranty (hahaha), expired. Of course. I figure, what the hell, I'll hook it up tot he PC. Dead as a doorknob. The deathbox has stuck.

48 hours is all it took to kill my drive. How can you say no to that!

I assume it was due to the increase in temp that caused this drive to fail. The drive is a Samsung HD501J with a manufactured date of 2007.06. Not too long ago and one that I expected to last.

This will be the last time I use an external HD enclosure without a fan on it as far as I'm concerned. Word to the wise: make sure those HDs are cool!

 

[DarkStarr]

Ouch.... this is why I dont use externals. I know they get HOT so I stick to flash drives pretty much lol

Oh and from what I have heard above 45C shortens the life of the drive as well as below 20-25C also shortens the life of the drive.

 

[marfig]

I'm thinking of buying one myself as part of my plans to improve my current (lackluster) backup strategy. But that's the only use I want to make of external hard drive enclosures; i.e. something meant to be turned on, do its thing and be turned off next. Never as a full-time access hard drive.

Is it good, Jack?
Another problem I noticed, beyond heat accumulation, is too many reports of external enclosures eventually failing. The internal electronic components on these things are usually cheap and of mediocre quality. As with many things, price is normally a quality gauge. But it's still hard to understand sometimes what enclosure exactly is the best fit. The problem with reviews is that they rarely test these under heavy stress and for extended periods of time (I mean months, not days or weeks), whereas the problem with user reports (along with voting) that many sites like to implement for products is that reports are always conflicting, with some users saying wonders, while others telling us to avoid it like the plague.

Ultimately, a good warranty period and a hefty price will mean a good quality enclosure. But while this may result in a nicely processed RMA, it won't for sure cover the hard drive that may have been destroyed by a bad enclosure. So, even when looking at (supposedly) good quality enclosures and (not supposedly) expensive ones, I cannot ever consider this has a full-time device. It will always remain an ON-OFF deal to me.

That said, this only applies to single drive external enclosures like this.

It's not the basket. It's the eggs.
Also, the hard drive itself can make a tremendous difference. For something that one wants to sit outside the computer cooling systems you so laboriously worked for -- and assuming a full-time operation mode -- I couldn't consider any drive that isn't specifically designed to be cool. Regardless of how good the enclose is said to be. The so-called Green drives here might play an important role (since they are otherwise pretty uninteresting on the typical home computer). Because they are designed to operated at lower power rates and have reduced acoustics, they are usually indeed cooler than their other cousins. But essentially any drive that is demonstrably cooler should be type of drive to go on these things.

 

[Psi*]

I have been using this or the dual drive version at least. Inexpensive & provides for pretty simple drive swaps as well as moving between machines. Being exposed as they are means a little extra care and dusting is required, but they do work ok.

 

[Ben]

Well Newegg wants $6.00 for a restocking fee. Additionally, their shipping label generator will only cost $13.95. I paid $20 each for 2 of these, so IF I go through with this I'll only get back $20... I guess it's time to ONLY buy from Amazon.

 

[DarkStarr]

Mod them then?

 

[Kougar]

Nothing I can really say that hasn't been already mentioned... external drives always have had a shorter lifespan than those inside a PC for a large variety of reasons. External enclosures aren't always better either, because many of them utilize the very same poor quality controller boards that are used in the external drives from major OEMs.

I remember one problem in particular with a major OEM (*cough* Seagate) was that their external drives had a built-in spin-down "feature" hardwired into some of the models... as in, the "feature" couldn't be disabled. So what happened was the drives would spin down and spin back up excessively after just a few minutes, greatly increasing the wear on the drives. A friend of mine only discovered this after he tried to track down why windows would sometimes "lag" when accessing the device he was just using a few minutes beforehand. I won't even get into how notoriously dangerous the FreeAgent drives were, except to say at one point it got so bad the PCB controller boards could be expected to fail even before the 1 year warranty had a chance to expire. You'd think companies would figure out there was a point where cost-cutting on production cost more than it actually saved.

Airflow in any external enclosure is a must, even some of the better "passive" models out there hide a warning that they were only intended for use with 5200RPM drives. But one good enclosure that's been around the block for awhile now would be http://www.amazon.com/Antec-MX-1-SATA-3-5-Inch-Enclosure/dp/B000NZVR3Q Largest drawback is definitely price, but it's a great little enclosure. I reviewed one two or three years ago for another site. Despite the age on those things, the only thing it's missing is USB 3 support ... if Antec ever revived the Veris series they might even be able to power it off USB 3 and skip the cost+ hassle of an external power brick. But again, for that price one could buy a large external drive! (The MX-1s are dirt cheap on ebay now) Docking stations are probably better if just using them for backups, these are also really good and now come in USB 3 flavors: http://www.amazon.com/Thermaltake-5-0Gbps-Docking-Station-ST0019U/dp/B003ZUXXVU/

I personally use a NAS just for all of those reasons and a few others. High quality power, cooling, and easily customizable hardware configuration (such as drive power settings), and a tiny 25-31W power consumption for 4x 7200RPM drives. But the investment cost is just as bad as that Antec MX-1, I can't argue that. I'll always have a NAS from now on though, the day this one wears out I'll get another NAS on the spot. They are also perfect as a home-made cloud storage device, to access anything when on the go, if you're confident enough in network security anyway. Better than leaving the entire PC on 24/7 when out of town ...not that I don't do that anyway for other reasons. *coughs*

 

[Ben]

Hmm interesting.

What I'm really looking for is just a cheap enclosure that has USB 2.0 so I can hook it up to my router to serve torrents. I suppose a NAS would be better, heck a small form factor machine running Linux would be ideal and get the job done, but I don't know of any cheap enough for my liking.

Anyone have any recommendations on that front?

 

[Kougar]

In that case, I'd say just grab a cheap MX-1 off ebay? There are plenty of 'em, and a few are still relatively new. Should be able to grab a like-new model for $15-20 shipped

 

[marfig]

Wow, Kougar. That Thermaltake dock is all I want and need! Thank you so much for that tip. I'm looking at this as my disk backup solution. Would you agree this could be a good use for it?

I owned a NAS not so long ago (about three years ago). Had to sell it and can't afford one anymore. But that's definitely the best solution and I cannot recommend them enough. The applicability factor is immense especially because as an always-on device that is entirely independent of a computer they can be very economical.

 

[Kougar]

Wow, Kougar. That Thermaltake dock is all I want and need! Thank you so much for that tip. I'm looking at this as my disk backup solution. Would you agree this could be a good use for it?

Yeah, those little docks are amazingly handy, I have a USB 2.0 version. Maybe during Black Friday I'll grab a USB 3.0 model... the only problem was the~35MB/s write bottleneck, but since the USB 3 docks completely fix that the things are just so infinitely handy...

Almost everyone and their Uncle copied the concept, so there are a dozen manufacturers out there to choose from. There are also docks built to handle two drives at once. Most of the docks can even fit an SSD too without problem.

I owned a NAS not so long ago (about three years ago). Had to sell it and can't afford one anymore. But that's definitely the best solution and I cannot recommend them enough. The applicability factor is immense especially because as an always-on device that is entirely independent of a computer they can be very economical.

You're spot on, as usual! "Entirely independent" was the # 1 reason I got mine. I was tired of OS problems and computer hardware issues both causing the failure of RAID 5 / RAID 10 arrays. People don't realize how fragile Intel's RAID setup truly is...