Rosewill RX30-U2FA Aluminum 3.5" IDE USB 2.0 (USB1.1) 1 port (4pin) FireWire 400 (1394a) 2 ports (6pin) External Enclosure

Comments: The enclosure is well built and matches a G5 well. I'm using the Firewall interface with a 300 GB seagate IDE drive on my Mac Mini. All works fine. The enclosure is a little large. Other enclosures I own have a much smaller footprint (smaller board) It is really designed to only be used vertically. To use it horizontally, you'll need to remove the screws that hold the stand on. The blue power/activity LED on the front is also excessively bright. Can light up a whole room.

Pros: Looks like a very tough built equipment - you can see other reviews confirming that.

Cons: Large - larger than any other enclosure I have seen. Heavy. Too many opperations to open replace drive close. You have about 12 screws (4 for outside cover element, 4 for an inner cover of the tray, 4-6 for you drive) and you need them all because the deviec is not designed to work without them. Won't stay falt/horisontal - you have ot remove the bottom bracket. Not suitable for carrying around. Just for desk top. No fan - though the device is 100% metal it heats up quite a bit. The indicato light in front is too bright. You can light up your living room with it. The power supply uses a strange 5 wire connector to the box with very thin pins. (as compared to regular DC jack most such products use) Not sure how long they will last.

Overall Review: For my need of a portable, easy to open/replace/close, light and cool (temperature-wise) box I will stick to little plastic (with fan) devices that I have now (not allowed to cross-reference to another product here). Those are easy to open and close and the bottom brakets snap in and out quickly and for most instances I do not need to use a single screw. They are made so that they softly lock the whole drive. Fan can be noisy but not more tham my Toshiba laptop.

Pros: I have used this to transport audio files for a little over 4 months. Tonight, someone changes the studio computer's firewire cable to a bad port. This has fried 3 drives in the past year for others, but it was stopped at my enclosure. True, I will have to get a new enclosure, but I will deffinately be buying the same one.

Cons: Kind of a pain to change out drives, but you deffinately know your drive is safe and secure.

Overall Review: Well worth the money spent!!! Works flawlessly with my 160 Gig Western Digital drive and kept it from getting fried! I found a hand-gun case from Academy with foam padding that it fits in perfectly for carrying around.

Pros: Running fine on USB connection. Sleek enclosure.

Cons: Firewire connection not recognized; can't daisy chain. Any ideas?

Overall Review: Prolly need to exchange it.

Comments: Upgraded from RX30-U2 to RX30-U2FA. This enclosure works great in XP, even spins down the hard drive for power savings and reduced wear & tear on drive. Both Firewire and USB work fine. Also, Norton Ghost 2003 standard boot disk works great with this enclosure with both the USB and Firewire DOS drivers that come with Ghost (they are Iomega drivers)

Comments: I can't say enough good words about this little box. It just works. Added a 250G drive to use for D2D backups and this enclosure rocks. Runs cool and zero trouble using via Firewire or USB (just have switch jumpers on the drive). Planning on buying a few more!

Comments: While it was working, I LOVED the unit, but just today it died. Also, it's not like it was extensively used. It was used for a few hours a week.

Comments: Great product! Pricier than some, but high quality material with good fit, form & function. Installed my drive, set-it up as a slave, powered on and plugged into the USB port and it was recognized instantly by Windows XP! I have tried several of the cheaper versions being offered and believe me this one is worth the money! It's substantial, and most of all it works! Great NEWEGG service as usual!