SPCR

Hi, all –

This forum seems long on information about drives, but a little sparse about external enclosures. I've owned a NewerTech miniStack 2.5 for almost a year, and I'm really not pleased with it. Hot and noisy. I got it because it had the same form factor as my Mac Mini, but I don't care about that now; I just want a really quiet enclosure.

Any suggestions? Thanks.

I know someone who has an iomega "mac mini-style" drive, and that is also very noisy. For an enclosure that size (and price), they could have put some good anti-vibration mountings inside, as it must be mostly empty.
But no, from the sound of it there's none at all and the drive is "hard" mounted to the plastic case. The drive with the mac mini on top (the way they say you should stack it) has to be stood on a piece of thick foam to avoid the transfer of strong vibration to the surface underneath.

Moo wrote:I know someone who has an iomega "mac mini-style" drive, and that is also very noisy. For an enclosure that size (and price), they could have put some good anti-vibration mountings inside, as it must be mostly empty.
But no, from the sound of it there's none at all and the drive is "hard" mounted to the plastic case. The drive with the mac mini on top (the way they say you should stack it) has to be stood on a piece of thick foam to avoid the transfer of strong vibration to the surface underneath.

And that creates all sorts of heating issues, and the miniStack already runs hot. The cooling fan comes on even when the disk is idle, and the ports are all unused. I'm very unimpressed with this product.

So, what's the alternative: get a full-size PC case just to use for a disk, and silent-ize it?

Ah, I was talking about the iomega drive, but it may be the same with yours also.
The iomega enclosure itself doesn't get hot I don't think, but no idea about the drive inside. I'm not sure if this enclosure has a fan, but I'm thinking it doesn't. Another poor thing about that enclosure that I didn't mention is that the drive is always spun up, even when the mac connected to it is turned off.

External enclosures haven't really changed much over the past few years. I'd search this forum for older posts and see what's recommended. Here's a couple of useful, newer threads:

viewtopic.php?f=7&t=59719

viewtopic.php?f=7&t=60254

...and it appears that your current enclosure is for a 2.5" drive? If so, you can suspend it within a 3.5" enclosure. That's the way I'd go. Here's a couple of "suspension" links:

viewtopic.php?f=7&t=8240

viewtopic.php?f=7&t=19147

Thanks, Ralf.

From looking over the stuff in those threads, it appears that the term "enclosure" can mean two things:

1. a box in which to put an HDD for insulating purposes
2. a device, including PS and ports for housing a HDD while it runs

I'm primarily interested in the latter, as I'm looking to replace my miniStack v2.5. Earlier this afternoon, a friend lent me his miniStack V3. I'm testing the drive that, when in the v2.5, kept resulting in Time Machine failures. So far it's looking pretty good, but I'll need a couple of days before I can say that the 2.5 was truly the problem.

Thanks again.

When I picked up my SSD from OWC (Other World Computing aka macsales) I got it bundled with a clean and tiny 2.5" drive enclosure that matches the aluminum Mac mini. They just added USB 3.0 support to the model I picked up.

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/USB2/OWC_Express

They also have a nice, clear enclosure with Firewire and USB support, but its dimensions are larger than the silver enclosure.

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/on-the-go

I got their tools as part of my bundle, which allowed me to remove the stock HDD from my mini and swap in an SSD.

Maybe I'm missing something, but I can't see what the problem is here. Is the enclosure for 2.5in drives? I've owned several of these over the years, with none of them having any of the problems mentioned here. Each of them was bought on ebay for a few dollars.

alleycat wrote:Maybe I'm missing something, but I can't see what the problem is here. Is the enclosure for 2.5in drives? I've owned several of these over the years, with none of them having any of the problems mentioned here. Each of them was bought on ebay for a few dollars.

If you're referring to the miniStack v2.5/3.0, no, they're for 3.5" drives. Since the v3.0 is working with HDDs that failed in the v2.5, after another day of testing, I'm going to decide that the v2.5 is defective with an intermittent problem and call their tech support.

Bump. I'm still at it, trying to find a decent enclosure for my Mini. The NewerTech miniStack has now failed (intermittently) with three drives (of two different vendors), and I'm about ready to launch it skyward.

I have a nice, quiet WD 3.5" drive that I'd prefer to use for this. Can ANYONE recommend an enclosure (or even a dock) that they've had personal experience with? Finding one that has worked with the Mini would be ideal, but...I'm not too sure how many Mac users I'll find on this forum, so I'm open to anything. Small and quiet preferred; USB 2.0 is fine. I don't need breathtaking performance, just something that works reliably.

Thanks for any ideas...

I like the Macally G series enclosure. http://www.macally.com/en/Product/drive35.asp

Thanks, Travis. There seem to be six G models on that page; any particular recommendation?