Rosewill RX35-AT-SC SLV Full Aluminum Cover, Metal Tray 3.5" Silver USB2.0 & eSATA External Enclosure

Pros: Works as it should. No buts or ifs at installation. I like that.

Cons: The 'light' doesn't work! So I don't have a clue if it's on or not..

Other Thoughts: Aside from the 'light' not working, it does what is supposed to do. Now, I have to decide if I give them another chance, since I need more enclosures (you just never had enough HDD's with stuff in them!)...

Pros: Nice looking. Keeps drives fairly cool for passive cooling.

Cons: I have two of these and have been having issues with I/O errors and eSATA link resets. It took me months to finally track it down, but I believe the power being supplied to the drive is either inconsistent or insufficient for normal workloads. I have seen issues when using it via USB and via eSATA. This was confirmed when I got the second enclosure a couple of weeks ago and started having problems with it tonight when putting load on the drive.

Other Thoughts: Ordered a couple of other Rosewill (RX-358 V2 SLV) enclosures to replace these. I have two of those and have had no issues, so I'm just going to run all four drives in identical enclosures.

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Valued Customer,
Thank you very much for purchasing this unit.
We strive to provide the most reliable and highest quality products to our customers.

Please kindly contact the Rosewill support team
Phone: 1- 800-575-9885
Email: rma@rosewill.com

So we may assist you with (in-warranty) replacement.
We look forward to hearing from you.

Thanks,
Rosewill Customer Care

Pros: Good construction, drive installed but very tight, No problem with screws as others have reported, but...

Cons: The drive transferred all the files I needed to back up but it would disconnect every time my Mac would go to sleep. On wake up, an error message would appear stating that "device was not ejected properly...". The on/off switch has to be recycled (turned off and back on) to get the computer to recognize it. Other external drives don't function in that way.
I tried the Rosewill site for help but I don't find it is any help. Tried connecting directly to the computer using the USB2 cable provided instead of a USB extension cable connected to the Rosewill provided USB cable but that was no help. Could it be the "wall-wart" power supply? I am tempted to use it with a different power supply from another external drive I have but am not certain that will work. I'm going to call the 1-800 number listed in other negative reviews I've read to see if there is any other ideas.

Other Thoughts: I'm not willing to send it back to Newegg because I see a $12 fee to ship it back to Newegg as punishment for availing myself of an advertised bargain by an otherwise previously good on-line merchant. Stand behind the stuff you sell or close up shop! This is a rewrite of a previously submitted review which was entered as a "four-egg" rating. I just couldn't find an option to edit a review on the site so I wrote another one. I think "two eggs" is more accurate.

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Valued Customer,
Thank you very much for purchasing this unit.
We strive to provide the most reliable and highest quality products to our customers.

Please kindly contact the Rosewill support team
Phone: 1- 800-575-9885
Email: rma@rosewill.com

So we may assist you with (in-warranty) replacement.
We look forward to hearing from you.

Thanks,
Rosewill Customer Care

Pros: Structure of the enclosure is up to the task. Stand is very stable and the cable construction is good quality. Aluminum case allows for good heat dissipation. Drive installed stores backup data as it should.

Cons: With a Western Digital 1TB WD Blue SATA 3 installed in this Rosewill Enclosure, I connected the the assembly to my Mac Mini to act as my backup/Time Machine drive. Formatting and name assignment was done without incident and Time Machine ran the first backup. When the Mini went to sleep, so did the Rosewill/WD drive. But when I woke the Mini back up I had an error message that said something to the effect that a drive had been ejected improperly...I had never had this message with my previous external drives. All previous drives had slept when the Mac slept and woke up still connected to the Mac both electronically and physically. Have recycled the on/off switch and the Rosewill/WD combo remounts without any trouble. However because of this experience, I am somewhat skeptical about the future/reliability of this setup as my Time Machine backup.

Pros: It looks solid

Cons: It disconnects frequently and needs to reconnect several times a day

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Valued Customer,
Thank you very much for purchasing this unit.
We strive to provide the most reliable and highest quality products to our customers.

Please kindly contact the Rosewill support team
Phone: 1- 800-575-9885
Email: rma@rosewill.com

So we may assist you with (in-warranty) replacement.
We look forward to hearing from you.

Thanks,
Rosewill Customer Care

Pros: Nice, solid feel to enclosure. For price, one of the better units available.

Cons: Tray that holds the hard drive won't fit into enclosure after you attach screws. Had to widen the countersunk with a large drill to allow the screws to fit flush. Not a big problem, but either supply correct screws or counter sink tray to fit properly. Still, a good buy.

Pros: Great solid build quality, does not feel cheap at all, works wonderfully.

Cons: None!

Pros: Looks nice, heavy aluminum case. Comes with power adapter, USB cable (which is short), and eSATA cable (which is pretty stiff).

Cons: Case too tight (had to use my own mounting screws). Works for a few minutes and then disconnects. Tried moving from powered USB hub to USB port on computer case but still got the inteferring disconnects.

Other Thoughts: Barely got one case together. The other was too tight. Used my own screws in the bracket (to the HDD that slides into the case) with smaller heads so they slid further into tapered holes. Leads for LED are only about 1/32" away from case. LEDs in both cases were bent down and had to be raised.

Spent several days tracking down why the drive kept disconnecting. Figured it was the powered USB hub. Nope, same problem when connected to laptop USB port. Reconnect is anywhere from 10 to 30 seconds. Next disconnect can be within 1 to 5 minutes later (unless I don't do anything with the unit). One case has SATA-1 and the other SATA-2 drive, both incurred random and short-interval disconnects, so it wasn't like one HDD was too fast or too slow for the interface inside the case.

These drives came out of a working desktop. They are good drives (well, they were but I don't know if all these disconnects have now corrupted the file system).

Will have to return/discard these SATA enclosures and find something that is reliable. These will be ALWAYS powered up and in constant use for backups and file transfers. The hard drive in the laptop was too small so I figured to repurpose my defunct desktop drives.

The case with the 160GB SATA-1 drive is always powering off and on. I can hear the platters spinning down and back up. The other case doesn't power/spin down as often but it disconnects as often. These are powered enclosures connected to a powered USB hub so there is no problem with insufficient power to spin the drive and power the interface.

I checked the power options. The HDD was configured to spin down after 2 hours idle. In advanced settings, the USB devices were configured to never power down.

If these units had provided reliable operation, they would be great both in function, looks, and features. Great looks and features are meaningless without stable operation. A cadaver can be made to look good, too.

I even had a scary event with these units. During a file copy, Windows Explorer locked up and so did Windows. It wouldn't shut down. I had to force power off. Then the laptop wouldn't boot. I got scared that something fried in the laptop or its HDD went bad. I just had my desktop die (bad electrolytic caps) and this was my last computer. Then I remembered reading in newsgroup how other folks with the same problem were told to unplug all USB devices to get the PC to boot again. Yep, unplugging these USB devices let my laptop boot and work just fine. Wow, that's corruptive and scary behavior.

So far my experience with Rosewill products is half are good, half are bad. That's not a good track record. Now I have to figure out and wait for replacement enclosures before I can continue using these HDDs. Constant disconnects and power cycles aren't healthy for the drives.

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Valued Customer,

Thank you very much for purchasing this unit.We strive to provide
the most reliable and highest quality products to our customers.

Please kindly contact the Rosewill support for in-warranty replacement.

Feel free to contact the Rosewill Customer Support team for further assistance at 1-800-575-9885 Monday - Friday 8AM - 5PM PST or via email at techsupport@rosewill.com

Pros: it works,cheap, and easy to install. esata ports download and upload speed are awesome, usbs are good but i dint buy it too use it with usb if u want greater tranffer rates u should get one with usb 3.0 i know i will

Cons: it gets really hot and im afraid of droping this thing. it was a tight fit but a little jiggling and pressure dint fix

Pros: -Low price in sale
-Aluminium Armor
-on/off Switch

Great Rosewill product
Happy!

Cons: Absolutely none!