is the usb casing for sata harddisk unreliable???

[tango_cash]

hi i have 80 gb sata hdd and now i am buying a 250 gb sata hdd.
i want to put my existiing 80 gb sata hdd in the usb casings which are famous nowdays to make it an external hdd.

my vendor says that those casings come only for the older pata or parralel drives.he says the casing for sata hdd is expensive at Rs1500 and also they are unreliable.
(while the casing for older pata drives cost around rs 750) so the casing for sata hdd costs just double.
he says he will have to specially order it and if it does not work or stops working after sometime then there will be no replacement.

he tells me to sell my curent 80gb sata which will fetch around Rs1200-1300 and buy a pata hdd for abt Rs2300 and buy a casing for the pata drive.that would be 2300-1300=1000+750=1750 just Rs250 more than the cost of a sata hdd casing.and i get a new hdd as well.

is it true that the casings for sata drives are rare,not easily avalible and unreliable???

also the prices that he mentioned of
1. both the casings(sata-Rs1500 & pata-Rs750)
2. my 2 yr old 80gb sata hdd (Rs 1200-1300)
3. a new 80gb pata (Rs2300)
correct??

[gauravakaasid]

Originally Posted by tango_cash

my vendor says that those casings come mainly for the older pata or parralel drives.he says the casing for sata hdd costs a premium at rs 1500 (while the casing for older pata drives cost around rs 750) and also they are unreliable.

hearing this for the 1st time, that too coming from a vendor! i know of many people who are using USB cases for their older PATA drives, and they are working fine. Also the prices for these casings have come down to 500-550 buks

Originally Posted by tango_cash

he tells me to sell my curent 80gb sata which will fetch around Rs1200-1300 and buy a pata hdd for abt Rs2300 and buy a casing for the pata drive.
also the prices that he mentioned are the right???

maybe the dealer is after your HDD
my advice: check out another shop

[gg_3000]

I know of a frnd who uses his 80 GB SATA with USB Casing.. He has been using it for abt 4-5 months now.. He is not facing any probs yet.. He bought a local case that costed him abt 700 bucks.. Its some korean or chinese make..

There's no warranty for it.. But i guess that for 700 bucks, u can afford the risk!

[AshishSharma]

It should work absolutely fine a friend of mine is using it for long ... just be careful with your USB casing as some cheap one's fail to deliver the desired speed sometime ...

[gg_3000]

Hey mods, Dont u think that this thread belongs to Hardware Section!!

[tango_cash]

Originally Posted by gauravakaasid

Also the prices for these casings have come down to 500-550 buks

i think u should check again there is a price diffrence b/w casing for sata hdd an normal hdd. and u r right abt the price of normal hdd casing it does cost around 500- 600 bucks.

[gauravakaasid]

@tango_cash....oops, sorry i forgot to mention that

[tango_cash]

Originally Posted by gg_3000

I know of a frnd who uses his 80 GB SATA with USB Casing.. He has been using it for abt 4-5 months now.. He is not facing any probs yet.. He bought a local case that costed him abt 700 bucks

cud u mention which city ur friend got a casing for a SATA hdd for
700 bucks.
thnks

[techno_funky]

Originally Posted by gg_3000

Hey mods, Dont u think that this thread belongs to Hardware Section!!

Sir, next time please do use the report function
moved to hardware


On to the topic ive too "heard" about these casings being unreliable
was going to buy one myself got a 40gb pata hdd the vendors dont really talk much about this but they do try to sell you the costlier ones example vantech.

[Eazy]

I have both the eSATA and USB2 Vantec NexStar 3 external HDD cases and they have both been excellent. I get the same speed from a SATA HDD if it is in the computer case or in the eSATA case. The USB2 case gives me 33MB/s data transfer speeds with IDE HDDs. Not had a single problem with these cases ..... so far.... touch wood.

I think the HDDs possibly run into problems when used in external cases because of the high temps they reach inside them.
You have to choose a HDD which runs cool when it is going to be used in an external case... I got a HDD temperature of 63C whilst I was formatting a Maxtor 120GB in the eSATA case. I now use the Hitachi 7K160 series 160GB SATA II single platter HDD in the eSATA case as I found this to run cool.

[tango_cash]

hi cud u people mention the prices of SATA casings.
thnks

[Eazy]

Originally Posted by tango_cash

hi cud u people mention the prices of SATA casings.
thnks

I bought the the Vantec eSATA casing for 3.5k but there is a cheaper option which is the Zippy USB2 casing which is priced at 1200/- this one handles both SATA and IDE HDDs.

Read about the Zippy case here... http://www.techtree.com/techtree/jsp...687&cat_id=611

[wirelessraj]

Well recently i bought a HDD casing for my old IDE, which has two fans in the case to keep the HDD cool, i paid only 500 for that!!!

Got the case from S P Road, Bangalore

Recently my friend got a SATA case (Intex) for 1200 here in bangalore (this one is without fans)

[AshishSharma]

Hmmm doesn't all these bulky casings kill the purpose of External HDD .... If you only wish to use the HDD then connect it in the CPU as secondary. The idea behind the External HDD with casing is to have a portable HDD which can be carried around.....

Casing with 2 Fans ... wow thats like buying a ATX cabinet for the HDD .. No offense intended

[shantanu]

any new 80gb pata is coming around 1900/- in the market and sata 250gb is around 3400/-

1.5" casing is rs.350/-
and 3.5" is around rs.500/-

make sure you by the eligated rod coded casing with titanium outlining.. that will cost you around 750/-
comes in HP and Samsung

[wirelessraj]

Originally Posted by AshishSharma

Casing with 2 Fans ... wow thats like buying a ATX cabinet for the HDD .. No offense intended

The fans are really tiny about 1.5 inches

the average total size of the case is
Height: 2 inches
Width: 4 inches
length: 8 inches

I think thats an acceptable size for a case with 2 fans.