BYTECC External HDD enclosure

[Cricket]

I just got a aluminum BYTECC mobile enclosure from Newegg (model - ME-350U2). The enclosure comes in a box with slightly tacky cover design and a carrying handle. The aluminum housing itself is pretty good quality, fit and finish is very good and the silver aluminum case looks pretty stylish. The box contained the housing, a small bag of screws, the power adapter, a power adapter to housing power cable, a USB 2.0 cable, a foam pad with a self adhesive side and a driver/manual CD. Oh and a small instruction sheet showing you how to use the vertical stand.

I installed a spare 20GB 7200 RPM Maxtor HDD I had into the housing and then took it out again because I forgot to attach the data and power connectors first. The end cap has the necessary IDE and power connections on it along with the USB and power adapter ports and a rocker type power switch so you can turn the unit on and off.

After having made the necessary connections, I re-installed the HDD and closed up the housing. Then I plugged in the power cord and the USB cable and attached it to my PIII 1GHz computer running WinXP and turned on the mobile housing. WinXP informed me that a new USB device was found and proceeded to install the necessary drivers and such, then it told me that it was a USB 2.0 device and I could get better performance if I had a USB 2.0 capable motherboard...which I don't.

I then checked Windows Explorer to see if the new drive was listed and it was. Then I tested it out by moving files back and forth for a few passes. Performance was as expected with only USB 1.1 available, but it wasn't painfully slow. Since I had a Maxtor HDD installed there was a fair amount of drive noise coming from the housing, but I imagine if I used a quieter HDD (like a Seagate) the noise would be a lot less. The housing only got slightly warm and the HDD never showed signs of any heat distress. Pretty good for a 7200 RPM HDD in a closed enclosure with no fan or air circulation.

Overall I'm very happy with this purchase and will be looking to buy a few more to put larger HDDs in them for backup duty. Will also be telling my friends about these so they don't have to keep buying those expensive external drives they've been using to store their digital pictures on.

I'm really glad I heard about these external housings from glc.

:) Cricket

[bailey]

yes they are nice, I have changed the hard drive in mine 3 times so far, always to have a larger one, its got a 80 gig in it now, never understood how I got along without one.

[glc]

Since recommending the Bytecc housings, I have found even better ones from Apricorn. They are very high quality aluminum with fans, and come with excellent value-added software to clone and image hard drives. They are priced accordingly, if you are looking for cheap and have no use for their software, they may not be for you. They are available as bare kits or with a preinstalled drive. Newegg sells them at a discount from the direct price.

http://www.apricorn.com/shopping.php?ID=173

[Cricket]

glc, I've been looking at all the different external housings over at Newegg and was wondering if there is a big difference in quality and reliability between the various housing manufacturers (there are a lot of them)? I like the BYTECC I got, but there are some really nice housings from some of the other manufacturers. Just wondering what you thought of the other brands.

:) Cricket

[Blue_Gundam2002]

glc, I've been looking at all the different external housings over at Newegg and was wondering if there is a big difference in quality and reliability between the various housing manufacturers (there are a lot of them)? I like the BYTECC I got, but there are some really nice housings from some of the other manufacturers. Just wondering what you thought of the other brands.

:) Cricket
I'm not GLC, but me and my friends have tried a few different brands of external enclosures. I've found that Enermax, Kingwin, and Coolmax make very good enclosures, they feel solid and not flimsy like some other brands. One of these other brands is Sabrent, my friend had one and it fell off of desk and stopped working.

[Cricket]

I'm not GLC, but me and my friends have tried a few different brands of external enclosures. I've found that Enermax, Kingwin, and Coolmax make very good enclosures, they feel solid and not flimsy like some other brands.Thanks for the info Blue_Gundam2002, I really appreciate it.One of these other brands is Sabrent, my friend had one and it fell off of desk and stopped working.I think that would make any brand stop working. But I did look at the Sabrent housings and they don't seem as solid as some of the other brands.

:) Cricket

[glc]

The chipset on the interface board can make a difference too. I'm not up on the various USB chips, but for a Firewire drive, you want one with an Oxford 911 chipset. The Mac guys tell me that this is the only way to fly for a audio/video external drive.

[Smidget]

I've had 2 Bytecc externals for quite awhile now and their still going strong. I use one for a portable DVD burner.

I like them because they have the on\off switch. Newer ones may have come out by now with this feature. But the ones I've seen lately are turned off by unplugging them with the USB cable.

I've even used a power splitter and IDE 133 cable on it too hook up 2 drives for awhile. Perhaps I'll mod my own plastic casing to fit 2 drives.

[imhowie]

The one I am using is the ADI at newegg item #N82E16817146174. I put a 120 gb Seagate in it. With my new comp. running xp home the hook up was easy. It is the same external housing my DVD burner came in.

[not important]

I purchased the Bytecc external enclosure about a year ago to house a DVDRW for the Son to use with his laptop. My only complaint was one of the side locking strips doesn't fasten down securely in the last hole.