USB HDD enclosures. Which brands are best?

[Jeffsta]

I've never purchased/used a USB enclosure before, and have never heard of the brands that make them.

Someone mentioned this Orico 6518US3-BK one to me a few weeks ago, but there are way to many DOA/WD detection issue reviews for me to feel comfortable purchasing it. All other Orico's get similar reviews.

I'm liking this Dyconn Dubbler Dock, but it only has 15 reviews. All are good though, and any cons are minor things, not really anything to do with reliability. I've never heard of Dyconn. Are they a good brand? I don't mind spending the extra money if it's good, because it has a lot of advantages (Can quickly install 2 drives and clone with the click of a button are 2 of them).

The other 5 egg reviewed one is the UNITEK. I'm not liking it as much as the Dyconn Dubbler Dock, but maybe it's better?

Any suggestions? I don't want to spend a ton of money (I see there are quite expensive ones). I just want a simple way to change out Sata HDD's (Non OS ones of course). I will also use it to backup/clone my systems 250GB SSD drive (Only internal drive installed). I'm thinking USB 3.0 is a must since my rig supports 3.0.

 

[The Original Ralph]

i've had good luck with the Vantec Nexstar line - have three, all over 5 yrs old and no hitches, problems etc

 

[jsmithepa]

I looked at many of these things and none compel me to give them my money. If you need something inexpensive, you just gotta pick the least evil of the bunch.

Yeah, many says USB3 support but do they give you real USB3 throughput? you want a review that confirms these things can do 1+ mbit/s of modern HDDs.

Clone-with-a-button. How often do you do this? this can be performed in software, somewhere in one of these says sector-by-sector copy, meaning is gonna do a DUMB copy, meaning both drives have to be identical, is that what you want?

Buy from somewhere you can return easy that's all I can recommend.

 

[Jeffsta]

I looked at many of these things and none compel me to give them my money. If you need something inexpensive, you just gotta pick the least evil of the bunch.

Yeah, many says USB3 support but do they give you real USB3 throughput? you want a review that confirms these things can do 1+ mbit/s of modern HDDs.

Clone-with-a-button. How often do you do this? this can be performed in software, somewhere in one of these says sector-by-sector copy, meaning is gonna do a DUMB copy, meaning both drives have to be identical, is that what you want?

Buy from somewhere you can return easy that's all I can recommend.

You make good points. I would not Clone-with-a-button very often, just thought it might be a nice feature (I can live without it). I will also check my local stores (micro center, etc.) for ease of return. For an item that cheap, I can get 2 year warranty for under 10$ and exchange it whenever. I will also check reviews for speeds. Worse case scenario, speed is not right and I return it to local store.

Thanks

 

[Jeffsta]

i've had good luck with the Vantec Nexstar line - have three, all over 5 yrs old and no hitches, problems etc

I will give Vantec Nexstar a look.

Thank you

 

[Jeffsta]

My local micro center has many 5 star ones, with a lot of great reviews. I should have looked there first. 4 of the 5 star ones are Vantec's. Considering your success with Vantec's The Original Ralph, that was a great answer.

Thanks

 

[The Original Ralph]

............

.................., somewhere in one of these says sector-by-sector copy, meaning is gonna do a DUMB copy, meaning both drives have to be identical, is that what you want?

Buy from somewhere you can return easy that's all I can recommend.

not sure how "DUMB" a sector by sector copy is - i select that option in EaseUS ToDo Backup, and if i don't, the clone copy will turn out to have corrupted boot files, so i'll have to use the windows dvd to "repair" the installation. Only "hiccup" with sector by sector for me is the clone target drive has to be equal or larger than the OS drive

and the cloning takes 30 minutes vs 22

 

[The Original Ralph]

one tip i ought to throw out there. Every mfgr / supplier / vendor seems to be economizing in any way possible, driven i'm sure by competition.

when i purchased my seagate 2 TB 2.5" slim backup plus hard drives, the transfer rates felt slow - and the USB 3.0 cable they'd supplied with it were awfully thin and flexible, which made me suspect thin guage wire. I swapped a much heavier guage USB 3.0 cable i had here and bam, transfer rates almost doubled in speed.

so you might keep that in mind, if transfer rates aren't what you feel they should be. All my Vantec Nexstar's are USB 2.0 but the cables are heavy & stiff, so at least i know on those they were putting out a decent product.

fwiw

 

[Jeffsta]

one tip i ought to throw out there. Every mfgr / supplier / vendor seems to be economizing in any way possible, driven i'm sure by competition.

when i purchased my seagate 2 TB 2.5" slim backup plus hard drives, the transfer rates felt slow - and the USB 3.0 cable they'd supplied with it were awfully thin and flexible, which made me suspect thin guage wire. I swapped a much heavier guage USB 3.0 cable i had here and bam, transfer rates almost doubled in speed.

so you might keep that in mind, if transfer rates aren't what you feel they should be. All my Vantec Nexstar's are USB 2.0 but the cables are heavy & stiff, so at least i know on those they were putting out a decent product.

fwiw

Thanks for all the great info. I have narrowed it down to 3 Vantec's on micro center. They all have great reviews/ratings, so I'm now looking at price, ease of use, etc.

Is the EaseUS you do your backups with a free/paid program or something? On my old rig with XP, I never worried about backing up OS (It was on a dedicated HDD, and I had few programs/games installed). However, I'm new to 8.1 and will be doing the free upgrade to 10 OS soon. Since Windows 10 will be entirely different to fix than XP, and I will install more games/programs (since new rig can handle them), backing up my OS will be very important.

Thanks

 

[The Original Ralph]

YES, EaseUS ToDo Backup is a backup utility and they have a free ware version that i've been using since 2008.

I went thru all of them, Acronis (had two bad experiences with corrupted backup copies that failed me), seagate's software, samsung's migration software, windows backup utility and one other that the name escapes me

EaseUS does the backup the quickest - going thru a USB port, about 1.5 hours for 170 GB clone, where the others all ran 3 - 8 hours.

One tip, instead of doing a backup, do a clone copy - just clone the whole OS disk, and be sure to select "sector by sector". When i didn't i'd get the occasional clone that wouldn't boot and i'd have to install the windows dvd to "repair" the boot file. Sector by sector adds about 20% more time to the back up - i back up from the OS SSD drive to another SSD drive inside the computer, ie going thru sata ports, no throttling by the USB port, and a backup takes me 30 minutes. Going thru a USB port to a spinning HDD, more like 1.5 - 1.75 hour time frame.

i actually started to feel bad about using their freeware for so long, that i thought about springing for the paid version, but there's really no real benefit for me. Biggest advantage to me, is when i get hit by malware or virus, instead of spending 4-8 hours researching how to get rid of it, and even then sometimes you can't totally rid the system of it, i just copy the clone back to the OS drive and i'm done.

if you do go with it, be sure to make an EaseUS repair or boot CD to use in case you end up needing to clone back to the OS drive

fwiw

 

[Jeffsta]

Awesome info, thanks!

One last question, can I clone my 250GB SSD (with OS/programs/games) to a 250GB HDD (Not SSD)? I think you pretty much answered that, but I just wanted to make sure.

 

[The Original Ralph]

yes, but there's a selection in EaseUS, on the page where you select the target drive to clone to, down at the bottom, to "Optimize for SSD" - be sure to select that as well as selecting the "sector by sector" option

and again, think clone, not backup

 

[Jeffsta]

yes, but there's a selection in EaseUS, on the page where you select the target drive to clone to, down at the bottom, to "Optimize for SSD" - be sure to select that as well as selecting the "sector by sector" option

and again, think clone, not backup

Ok, sounds great. I always thought clone and backup were the same thing, that's why I kept getting them confused. Now I know better.

Thanks again for all the help.