External Hard Drive enclosure durability?

[dvd_maniac]

I have 2 hard drive enclosures now. I have gone through 2 others already. The 2 that are broken are like 30 cheapies from Compusa and I admit, I left them running pretty constantly. Is it a bad idea to leave enclosures running 24/7? Do they generally generate too much heat for that? The 2 new ones are $80 ADS enclosures and I hope they last a little longer than a couple of months...They have fans attached so maybe that will help..
How often do others here leave them running?

[krutaw]

Originally Posted by dvd_maniac

How often do others here leave them running?

I utilize a hard drive enclosure for work purposes and have used the same enclosure for approximately 4 years non-stop. I do use the 2.5" drive size instead of the 3.5" drive however, so the heat would not be near as much of a problem.

[dvd_maniac]

But do you leave it running 24/7? Does WinXP power management shutdown USB Hard Drives when it shutsdown the internal ones?

[Opus4]

I use two of these enclosures to hold my backup drives, alternating which one is in use. One is on 24/7 while the other is in offsite storage & I periodically switch them. I don't think the fan is very loud, but the PC it connects to is very loud, so I can't hear the external case fan to judge its noise level. I got them some time ago & had to update the firmware. Maybe they come with the newer firmware by now.

Before those, I had a pre-built external drive from Western Digital. It was on 24/7 for a couple years w/o problems.

- Andy