macally NSA2-S350U Aluminum 3.5" SATA USB 2.0 External Enclosure

Pros: Well, I'm a sucker for a nice external enclosure design and I have to say this is one of the best I have seen in a long while. Simple, clean, neat. Excellent cooling capacity. Fan and drives are VERY quiet. Cooling fan auto turns on and off by temp sensor controller so it is not running all the time. Even with two drives (WD 640GB on the bottom and a Seagate 320GB on the top) the case remains cool to the touch after hours of heavy drive use. Power button on the front is a big asset since I have mine in a rack-mount. Small foot print, much smaller than the pictures lead on. Shorter than a 5.25 DVD case and is really no wider that the drives themselves. Much smaller than many of my previous single drives cases. Will definitely be buying another at first opportunity.

Cons: Only real complaint is the instructions suggest pulling the case out the back. DON'T. It is better to push it to the front as to not bend the front plate which is VERY easy to do and is a bit pliable. Since the case is a straight tube this is not a problem in any way. Other minor points: Blue LED may be too bright for some and is situated under a control panel button so it's not easily 'dimmable' by tape or other methods without disruption the button function. Fan sometimes works too well. A few times case has gotten warm enough inside to kick on for 5-10 seconds, then shuts off. Then 20 seconds later starts up again. ;) This could be annoying to some, but it is not a deal breaker by any means as it is still very quiet. HD and power cables inside are a bit stiff. Have to give them good bend to ease cable tension and prevent a possible bent or broken end but this could be because it is brand new.

Overall Review: An optional Low/High/Auto fan switch and High/Low/Off switch for the drive light would be nice touches and very easy to incorporate I think; given the excellent and elegant design. There is more than enough room for them with the available space. Love the small size, I was not expecting that. The two amp power brick does get warm on one side, but mine is not as hot as the other reviewer's here was. He may want to send for a replacement just in case, since it does power both drives. A two bay SATA case with Normal & JBOD options for less than many charge for only one bay that takes up the same space. Just awesome. Got mine in less than two days. As always, NewEgg rocks.

Pros: Read the other reviews.. I just saw one, and from that one the person mentioned my exact feelings

Cons: I had my drive a year and a month. But toward the end of the year, the drive was not working right, well what I thought was the drive. It was actually the enclosure. I took the drive out, and it worked fine in another enclosure. The Macally enclosure failed. I contacted them a month later, after the holidays, and there was nothing they would do for me. I could not get anyone to even call me back. After several attempts I finally got the RMA department. I sent an email to her, but since it was over a year, they would not cover this. Seems like everyone else''s enclosures are failing about the same time. I was even going to buy another one if they took care of the warranty.

Overall Review: Stay away. Another guy nailed my thoughts right on the head.

Pros: the Fan comes on automatically when temperature exceeds certain degrees. heat sensing fan. very well thought out design wise. very well built. Very sturdy. cools EXTREMELY well.

Cons: no where on the manual it mentions about the heat sensing fan feature. i almost RMAed the enclosure because i thought the circuitry for the fan was broken. it wasn't untill after i turned it on for a while the drive stareted to warm up the fan automatically came on.

Overall Review: so far only have one 500GB drive inside. plan on adding another 500GB. currently using it to store all my movies from big to small. does what it suppose to plus cools extremely well, which was what i was looking for in the first place. my previous thermaltake external eclosure, which had the same design as the Antec enclosure, used to over heat all the time causing data transfer glitch when watching movies on the drive. and i live in Southern California, i had to find an active cooling solution enclosure. look no farther. i will update with another review again later if something does go wrong.

Pros: Solid, nicely designed, and sharp looking enclosure. No logos or superfluous lights...in fact, the only light is the relatively unobtrusive blue one behind the power button, which doubles as the activity light. Slid open smoothly & without problems, and drives were easy to install. It booted up quickly & without any errors on the first try. The aluminum construction/finish would match perfectly with a Mac Pro tower...they definitely "borrowed" liberally from Apple's simple/classy designs, which is a good thing, especially compared to some of the obnoxious, blinky, logo-covered enclosures out there. Comes with all the drive mount screws & cables you need to install two 3.5" disks.

Cons: The manual could've been clearer as far as the RAID config jumper is concerned. What it calls "JBOD/SPAN" is actually just SPAN (both disks combined into a single concatenated drive). If you want true JBOD (each disk is treated as a separate drive), you have to set the jumper to "normal".

Pros: If you scroll the review for the product all the way back to the very first one since the product launch about a year and half ago, it was written by me. at that time i was extremely happy with the product.

Cons: WARNING!!! apparently i am not the only one. After this product's launch over a year ago, apparently users like myself and others are starting to have their unit(s) failing left and right. Initially i thought it was my HDD, I even sent the HDD back and replaced with a new drive. it turned out the problem wasn't the drive, but the enclosure!! it now can no longer boot up any of my drives.. i've owned this product for about year and half, obviously already past the original 1 year warranty. but THIS goes to show the lack of quality for products like this. Now they even altered their warranty from one year to 30 days. obviously someone internally knows the problem and is trying to protect the bottom line.

Overall Review: Let this be an example for a product that can appear to be great initially, but is fundamentally flawed. Their website is a joke, even if you try to do an RMA within 30 days, you can't because it's nowhere to be found. I am extremely disappointed, as this was suppose to be a high dollar investment for my external setup, it turned out to be nothing but a pretty looking paper weight. Please STAY FAR away from this product for the lack of quality.

Pros: It is a relatively cheap dual-bay enclosure that looks does the job, looks good doing it and it is aluminum. Although not as refined looking as macally's single disk enclosures, it is still much better than most of those plastic boxes everywhere else. Passive Cooling & Active Cooling.

Cons: Does not come with any rubber feet. No HD activity lights. Keeps HDs at idle.

Overall Review: Initially I did experience the continual cyclic nature of the fan, but discovered what was required to prevent this: vertical stance. Laying it flat, even with my self-installed rubber feet, on the desk did not give enough air flow around the enclosure for sufficient passive cooling at idle to prevent the fan from cycling. After I changed the orientation the fan no longer cycles at idle. Also, would be nice to be able to turn one drive off manually.

Pros: Very compact for 2 drives, includes cooling fan. Good transfer rates at about 35-40MB. Easy installation overall. Sleek, unobtrusive. Works automatically with Windows XP

Cons: Fan cycles constantly. Can get a bit annoying. Included USB cable is too short. Had an extra laying around for my use. Jumper is in a very bad position. Had to use tweezers to move to JBOD mode.

Overall Review: Keep in mind that windows XP 32bit and below cannot use drives over 2TB. I have 2 1.5TB drives setup as JBOD so they show as separate drives. Normal mode will not work and reports ~750GB drive in windows xp. NOT a fault of the enclosure as far as I can tell but I don't have a vista or xp64 system to test with

Pros: Smaller than expected size; Quiet operation; Front panel on/off switch; Cooling fans included.

Cons: No significant "cons"

Overall Review: Installing the upper drive bracket was a little difficult due to the power switch wires; Could use some rubber feet (as it is, I'll go and buy some small rubber feet)