Drive Enclosures

Hey Rock: Before you scratch yourself bald completely, the enclosures, although hot swapable, come with their own power supply and cooling fan. So, unplug USB cable, drive disabled, fan keeps running. At least on the drive I have, annoying, waste of power, circuitry at risk from surge/lightning, and maybe wear it out?

Turn off with switch, eliminate 3 of the 4 for sure.

Take Care

Martin

 

If your case does not have a on /off switch and it is hard to get to a plug to unplug it so it does not run all the time, this is what I did. Went to Home Depot and in the electrical department they sell a cord that has an on / off switch on one end and the other end plugs into the wall socket. On the backside of the one that plugs into the wall socket you plug in the power cord from the case. The cord on the one I bought was 6 feet long so it reaches the top of my computer desk. Now I can turn the power on and off to the drive case without having to get under the desk to unplug it.

 

Not trying to argue here but if one was to pull the power plug out of the back of the box stands to reason that would kill power too. No, definately not as neat and yes, I'm a neat freak myself. Still like my little laptop HDD USB enclosures that run without any power adapter at all. Fits right into a shirt pocket. Then again, different strokes for different folks - that's what keeps me coming back here - nobody has a monopoly on brains and I'll take all the help I can get.

 

With me it isn't a question of neat, it is a question of access. Power cord restricts forward movement of case from rear of desk, reach around under corner of monitor to rear of case blind, ok for unplug, just hope cord does not fall off of back of desk and disappear into rats nest of wires, then to use drive again, try to plug power cord in little hole, hard to find and match with plug in confined quarters when you can't see it and wrist jammed under monitor. Yes, I would put it someplace else if there was someplace else, tight quarters here.

Will tell anybody to get one with switch, better safe than sorry, wouldn't want some unfortunate in my situation.

Russ, good suggestion, going to HD tomorrow anyhow,will pick one up for old enclosure, new one has switch.

Thanks,

Martin

 

Hey Rockster,

And last but not least noise - not that it's that noisey. I'm not using it most of the time, only for backups, at least for the moment.

The case is sitting on the tower and easy for me to reach the front and just push the on/off button.

Regards - Charles

 

Just had a brainstorm. Up in my garage, I have an extension cord with a foot switch that I used to use for a table mounted router. It was more trouble than it was worth for that application, so I quit using it some time ago. It's somewhere in the garage, search tomorrow, if I can find it it is going from outlet to under my desk then up to the enclosure. That way, turn enclosure off/on with a tap of my toe.

martin

 

Now you're talking .........

 

Be careful where you put it!

My friend got a small (40GB) Western Digital harddrive with his computer. Instead of putting it in, he put it into a USB 2.0 enclosure and he used it for backups. Recently he told me that his first chkdsk pulled up quite a lot of file corruption.

He considered replacing it. But I reminded that it was just a few days out of the box. So I came over and I immediately noticed that it was on top of his printer. While the printer shook printing, he wrote files to the drive! No wonder!

So obviously, the bad sector stopped coming and he's decided 1000KB of bad sectors isn't enough to warrant a new drive.

Don't let it heat up, shake or get submerged in water!