[yo-mike]

For a while now I've been using the G Drive Q for my external HD enclosure for backups.
I think it's about the best quality HD enclosure I've ever owned. It's high quality metal (Aluminum I believe) with preforated walls and a heatsink at the bottom to help dissipate the heat.

I'll post some pics tonight if I can.

Some people say they'd never use a HD enclosure that doesn't have a fan. However, I got this one and it has no fan, yet it seems to be really solid so far. I don't think I've ever read any negative reviews about the G Drive Q series. That's why I got it. It's also quad interface: eSATA, USB, FW 400, FW 800. No one ever told me SATA drives would work with my eMac USB 2.0 and this works great and it's very fast. I got it connected via FW 400.

What's your favorite and why?

Thanks,

-Mike

[teflon]

Yeah I think that the G Drive type enclosures (which you can get from quite a few brands or as empty shells) are all great and very solidly designed cases. Plenty of ventilation from the G5/Mac Pro-esque grill on the front, the option for plenty of connections on the back and varying sizes of case to accommodate either one or two drives.

I would say, though, that Iomega's sequel to their Ultramax RAID (which uses this kind of case) is better because it has some indicators on the front to show the drive's states.

I think, though, that the Drobo comes in at a close second. Its very expandable, doesnt conform to the limitations of RAIDs, by allowing you to use different drives of different sizes in whatever config you want, yet is completely self backed up etc. etc. For that alone it should get the accolades, except that it doesnt have enough connectors on the back. Youve got USB 2 or FW800. When youre dealing with up to 8TB of data, even FW800 is limiting so it would be great to see the Drobo 3 come out with eSATA, USB 3 and FW1600. Now that would be awesome and get me to plonk the crazy money that theyd want.

[Greg Gant]

I have generic eSATA case that's similar to this:
http://www.pc-pitsto...res/scsat4e.asp

I have a four port eSATA card running from my Mac Pro to my eSATA tower, total of 9 3.5 inch HDs connected to my Mac Pro, but notably the four internals are in a RAID 1+0 config, and I have a Time Machine volume, so that's 5 HDs worth spent on one working volume. So its more like I have 5 useable volume for storing data.

[PeopleLikeFrank]

I've got an Oyen Digital quad-interface enclosure to carry with me with my MBP when I travel:

http://oyendigital.c...tore/EB2-S.html

It's pricey, but I couldn't really find anything with FW800 that wasn't.

For home, I have a Synology 2-disk NAS. I've got a couple of 750GB drives in there (RAID 1 for paranoia), that I occasionally image the 2.5" portable to (since it already has the MBP backed up). I also use it to stream music to my PC, and it'll stream video too. Again, it's pricey, but pretty full-featured (it actually does a ton of stuff I never use, FTP support, full Apache/PHP webserving, other stuff), and I managed to snag it on sale.