ICY DOCK MB559U3S-1SB Aluminum / Plastic 3.5" Matt Black USB3.0 & eSATA Professional Ultra Slim External Hard Drive Enclosure

Pros: Easy. Loading mechanism is simple. Installation takes 2 minutes.
Four screws into the HD through the bracket, slide it in, done.

Aluminum keeps HD plenty cool w/o fan - although some drives get a lot hotter than others, 10k RPM drives especially.

Cons: None. This is the best enclosure I've bought, with or without a fan.

Other Thoughts: E-sata can be tricky with some motherboards. Some need handholding.

Pros: -nice looking

-feels high quality

-speced for 4tb drives

-usb 3.0 speeds

Cons: -the full aluminum construction is touted as a means to manage thermal stress but i can't say it does much. i've had my seagate barracuda fully open air in a dock and it idles the same temps. maybe it's impressive that an enclosure can keep that temp. temps hit 42C under several hundred gigabytes of transfer

-hd tray is a hassle dis/mount. you would be better served with a dock rather than an enclosure. would be much quicker

Other Thoughts: -in hindshight, i should have bought a dock. luckily my full sized tower has enough room for 10 drives. i'll be using that now that i've seen how much airflow helps drive temps.

-this is a good product if you intend to move a large capacity drive around. looks like it's very durable.

-i recommend deploying the legs and standing it up vertically. this will increase the surface area for better heat transfer. legs have this grippy rubber on them. it's very stable actually.

-you should really mount drives internally. moving my wd black and seagate barracuda to internal dropped idle temps by a full 10C. this would be huge over 5 years of ownership. don't recommend you keep a drive connected if you're not transferring files. it'll just sit there at 38C....idling. seriously.

-icydock has an fan equipped enclosure too. things i don't like about it:
1. lifespan of the fan questionable
2. fan looks proprietary and not replaceable
3. odd shape ruins the portability of an enclosure. if you're really concerned about temps, mount internally

Pros: Works fine with 3TB, even 4TB drives. Drives keep cool with the aluminum body and ventilation. Tray compatible with internal backplanes of the same brand, which makes it a breeze to go portable, take hard drive out of desktop, put it on this enclosure and thats it. Its the perfect combination if you have an icy dock backplane.

Cons: Should also have a vented front like the backplane's trays. Would add better passive heat dissipation. Extra trays (for swapping), are a bit expensive.

Other Thoughts: Make sure your motherboard, bios and operating system support hard drives above 3TB (not just bootable, but also secondary). Otherwise, refrain from posting reviews stating that it doesn't work if you are running 5 year old technology. Sorry, this product is not for those stuck in the past.

Pros: This is a great quality device from the maker of the best quality and most innovative internal and external drive enclosure/backplanes/adapters in the industry.

IOt si simple, and a no-brainer.

Cons: People like "N/A" should be barred at birth from being able to submit reviews or even opinions on things they apparently are not qualified to speak to.

He is apparently not familiar with the issues of hard drives over 2.0 TB, and the legacy limitations of much of our "olde" technology.

To make a comment about why manufacturers produce technology that is compatible with his STUFF, leads me to believe that he thinks we should still be using IBM Selectric Typewriters.

Time marches on buddy, and get with it.

Partition your drive into two Partitions of less then 2.0 TB's each and you will be good to go if you are using an antiquated BIOS or using anything less then Windows 7 - 64 BIT software.

Other Thoughts: N/A should have returned it to NEWEGG as not compatible and paid the few bucks for return shipping rather than post a dumb review on a good product.

Lastly, IcyDock has excellent support , and he could have contacted them for questions and answers like in Kindergarten.

No, I do not work for ICYDOCK. I am an ICYDOCK technology "user".

Pros: 1. Sleek
2. Really thick connection cables
3. Nice Features
4. Solid feel to it

Cons: 1. Made in China
2. Does not support 3TB

Other Thoughts: I got this drive because my old enclosures are not compatible with 3TB fully so I figured I'd buy one of these an try it. I'm having trouble with these 3TB seagate drives, it's incredibly dumb that stores sell these drives when computers are mostly not compatible with them. My computer kinda works but hates these drives an will crash the MBR thus destroying them. I've been "down" for over 8 months now an can't get back up & running, thinking I should get multiple 2TB drives because that's the only thing that works. Yesterday I formatted a 3TB with a messed up MBR after a failed transfer (3 days wasted) an I had the full 2.7TB, I safely removed the drive an turned it off. Today I turned it on an all I get is "initialize disk" an only 746GB showing up. Either this drive enclosure is NOT compatible with 3TB or my computer's motherboard is not compatible or both. This is a epidemic problem an the computer tech guys all around are clueless!