Recommended hard drive enclosure


Most people nowadays have so much data that they need an external drive. I recently upgraded to a 6TB hybrid drive (Seagate STBD6000100) which was an upgrade from a couple older external drives I had and I’m really happy with the decision to upgrade.

For an enclosure I highly recommend the Vantec NexStar HX which connects to a computer via ultra-fast USB 3.0. Vantec also makes models with USB 3.0 plus eSata or Firewire ports. However USB 3.0 is faster and has become the standard across all platforms, so unless you really need the eSata or Firewire port for some legacy reason this USB 3.0-only model should be fine.

What makes this particular enclosure so great is it has a fan for active cooling. Also, it is made by Vantec which is a tested, established company which has been making enclosures for a long time.

I initially bought an enclosure from another company and had to return it because the fan was too loud. But the fan on the NexStar HX is basically silent. Also, compared with the model I returned, the NexStar HX is very easy to install a drive into. The other model actually required me to deal with 8 screws, but the NexStar HX only requires two screws to open the enclosure. It has a latch that locks into place over the drive once it is inserted and does not require any extra screws. There are also some small foam pads included which can be placed below the latch mechanism to ensure the drive is firmly seated in the enclosure.

Its really nice to have a 6TB external drive to store stuff. Not only do most people have a lot of media files, but its also important to make regular backups of data. The first time I ever used the drive connected via a USB 3.0 connection to my main laptop, I was amazed at how blindingly fast it is.

One tip I will mention if you are using a drive that is larger than 2TB. If you are going to partition it with Linux I recommend using the gdisk utility which will ensure that the partitions are aligned on 8-sector boundaries (see also archlinux.org wiki -> Partitioning -> Partition alignment and also thomas-krenn.com -> Partition Alignment and archlinux.org wiki -> Advanced_Format).


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