Pros: Slim case design, full eSATA support, decent price for an external SATA case.

Cons: Supplied external back plate only has one external SATA connector.

Overall Review: This is a great case, but after reading many of the reviews there are a few things you should know. 1) The drive assembly fits in a tongue-and-groove support in the center of the case. You need to be careful and get it into the groove so that the drive will be secure. If your drive rattles you most likely didn't get it aligned correctly or missed the groove. It will fit very snug in the groove when aligned correctly. 2) The internal drive LED cable is easy to break. It runs along the outer sleeve. Be careful not to get it underneath the case screw because when you assemble the case, the screw can cut the lead in two. You may want to tape it up to keep it out of the way when assembling the case.

Pros: Looks nice, great eSATA performance.

Cons: Ultimately the construction is questionable; it would not survive a decent fall on a hard surface, or, more importantly, protect your drive. Also, I really dislike the way the controller board connects to the hard drive. The SATA and power wires are too long and force you to kink/crumple it to seat the hard drive, especially because they aren't located directly behind the ports on the hard drive (the SATA connectors on HDDs are on the end, but the wires are centered on the board, making you force it over instead of allowing you to just plug it directly in if it were aligned right). Heat is another concern, I would strongly recommend against putting a hotter-running high performance hard drive in this, such as the 750GB Seagates or WD Raptors/RAID specific drives. I installed a Western Digital WD5000KS drive in mine because of its cooler operating temperature.

Overall Review: eSATA performance is superb. I copied a 215mb file to it via USB 2.0, which took right around a minute. I then copied it back via eSATA, and it took literally 5 seconds. Then I backed up 38.6GB to it in 10 minutes. Very impressive.

Pros: Direct TV improved storage: I recently added 2Terabytes of storage to a HR24-500. I currently have 15 hours of HD content recorded and have 98% storage capacity left! I have recorded/watched/deleted numerous programs flawlessly. 750 hrs. of HD recording! I used a Western Digital HD 2T|WD WD20EARS 64M % (item# N82E16822136514) and an external enclosure: ESATA NEXSTAR3|VANTEC NST-360SU-BK.(item# N82E16817145167) These two items contain everything necessary to allow connecting to ESATA or USB 2. It took about 5 min. to put the two together, another 5 to hook them to the HR24-500 and only slightly longer than normal for the Direct TV to be ready when I turned everything on. You must use ESATA to connect to Direct TV Receiver, USB will not work with Direct TV!

Cons: Blue led can be annoying in a home theater however it is easy to disconnect, cover with electrical tape or place behind other equipment. Not a problem with a computer.

Overall Review: Because Direct TV is never really "off" and can update itself anytime and because you may have it programmed to record something, don't turn off your external storage. That is why I recommend WD Green drives, to save energy. Place this unit in a well ventilated place and it will last at least as long as the (probably reconditioned) one in your Direct TV would last. If you decide to go this route be aware that: All programing, anything you have previously recorded or have scheduled to record, the 2 week schedule (EVERYTHING) is stored on the Hard drive. It will remain behind on the internal HDD but is inaccessible with an external drive hooked up. You will have to rebuild your favorites and what you have scheduled to record from scratch. Because of the copyright protection built into Direct TV should your HDDVR break you will loose all stored programming. The external drive may still function with your computer or a replacement HDDVR but the stored data is inaccessible.

Pros: Stuffed a 1.5TB in immediately. Works like a champ.

Cons: The black shows fingerprints really well. Seems a bit fragile, I don't get the built to last feeling.

Overall Review: Works as advertised. need a case for your spare drive? add to cart.

Pros: eSATA. Design is fine. I recall someone saying something about pinching a wire inside--you can only pinch it if you're absolutely rough-housing it during installation.

Cons: The ONE thing I do not like is the power cable is shorter than I'd like it to be. It is certainly shorter than average.

Overall Review: I'm quite impressed.

Pros: Both USB 2.0 and eSATA run very fast. Handles my 750GB Samsung Spinpoint F1 very well. Nice and quiet.

Cons: Drive gets a little warm sometimes. Power brick can be a little awkward sometimes: The 2.5"x2.5"x.75" brick plugs in sideways and can take away valuable plug-space on your power bar--and it length (5 ft.) might be short in some situations.

Overall Review: Well made. Directions on assembling your drive is vague sometimes, I guessed right on how to hook up activity LED.

Pros: Great build quality all around, Everything fits nice and tight without needing excessive force to install. Aluminum is shiny and pretty. Loaded HDD and it fired right up for USB and eSATA on two different machines.

Cons: Power brick cord could be longer Ventilation holes wouldn't be a bad idea Fingerprint magnet External casing screws are softer metal, careful not to strip them

Overall Review: This is my first external HDD after my HTPC HDD finally filled up, I decided to recycle the smaller drive and use it as a backup drive and move on from molassas DVD backups. After much newegg review reading I decided on this unit. Got it today and threw in my Seagate 300GB HDD and transferred around 288gig of movies/files over to the new WD 750GB HDD on the eSATA. Fark, its freaking fast! USB 2.0 seems dirt slow in comparison! Seagates arn't known for running cool so I was concerned with heat during this long data transfer. Even after an hour of straight working, the enclosure was barely warm so it likely doing a good job of transferring heat without a fan.

Pros: WD3200KS drive installed with no problems. Both esata and usb ports work. Western Digital drive does not get excessively warm.

Cons: Back of drive could be better supported. Drive lays on support pad when drive is layed down, but drive can have movement when upright in bracket. However I do not see this as a real problem.

Overall Review: HD Tach showed following rates: Sequential read speed starting at 67MB/s to 40MB/s with esata; 34mb/s with usb2 Burst Speed 120MB/s on Silicon Image sata; 201MB/s if NVIDIA sata; 34MB/s using usb2 port