HD-case w. 2TB support

**orphess** · 04-27-2009, 09:58 PM

Does anyone know of an external 3.5" HD-case with support for a 2 TB harddrive? Single disk case preferrably, but multiple disk cases are also of interest. USB 2.0 or ESATA support.

Any tip greatly appreciated, since I've been looking everywhere for the above!

**lynx** · 04-28-2009, 12:48 AM

I don't really understand your question: AFAIK there's no difference between a 2TB drive and a 80GB drive, apart from the capacity.

This is the one I'm currently using, I don't know of any reason why I can't put a 2TB drive in it.

**Detale** · 04-28-2009, 02:26 AM

I got confused on this one also. I saw the tittle and then read you're name Lynx and thought to myself" You can't put a 2TB drive in any external 3.5" case!!??" Was coming in here to learn something

To the OP a 3.5" drive will fit in any 3.5" case dude. Here is the one I'm using, well it's not an enclosure just a cable but I have a few drives I like to swap This one does IDE,SATA, PATA

I am looking at getting one though something like this

other than the blue lights I like it. $40 and an 80mm fan. How could you go wrong?

**orphess** · 04-28-2009, 10:28 AM

Actually, all models one I've come across have a 1 or 1.5 TB disk capacity limit. Mostly you have to dig a little deeper (in the manual i.e.) to find these limits.

Snip from the product page for the popular A.C.Ryan ACR-HD50138:

"supports all 3.5" harddisk max capacity 1024GB2"

(http://www1.acryan.com/alubox/ACR-HD50138.shtml)

Originally Posted by Detale

I am looking at getting one though something like this

other than the blue lights I like it. $40 and an 80mm fan. How could you go wrong?

Actually, you could go wrong with this one if trying to mount a drive larger than 1.5 TB. Look at that New Egg sales page, under Specifications and you'll see that there's a 1.5 TB limit.

Thanks for replying and your tip though!

**clocker** · 04-28-2009, 11:33 AM

I'm not sure what these "limits" are all about.
My Vantec NexStar enclosure says it's limited to 500GB but a 1TB drive works just fine.

Recently I've been using a drive docking station (here) instead of multiple external drives and it works great.

**orphess** · 04-28-2009, 11:47 AM

Originally Posted by clocker

I'm not sure what these "limits" are all about.
My Vantec NexStar enclosure says it's limited to 500GB but a 1TB drive works just fine.

Recently I've been using a drive docking station (here) instead of multiple external drives and it works great.

Unfortunately I had to learn by experience about these limits. I just returned a casing that evidently had a 1 TB limit. Nothing in the sales add said anything about this. Nor did the manufacturer's product page.

I don't know what the limiting factor is, but I guess it must come down to the integrated SATA controller.

**lynx** · 04-28-2009, 06:23 PM

It looks to me as if the one from AC Ryan is exactly like the one I originally linked to.

Here's the same thing again, this time from Amazon, and with the explicit statement "No upper limit on HDD capacity".

My guess is that the page on AC Ryan is somewhat out of date (all the images in the "gallery" are missing), in which case there's a good possibility that they didn't expect drives in excess of 1TB any time soon. Just to back that idea up, one of the images is of the (defunct) USB/firewire version. notice that it is a tick factor - I think they probably wrote that when specifying 1024GB was bragging. It isn't even a limit which makes sense when talking about disk capacities. Couple that with the statement "supports all 3.5" harddisk up to 10000RPM" - another bragging statement. The disk speed isn't even measured by the interface so how could it be a limit? It just happened to be the speed of the fastest disks then available.

I've looked at several cases, in every instance where a limit is mentioned, the comment has been that there is no limit. With a Sata interface there really isn't any reason why there should be a limit. Even with a PATA interface the limit used to be 137GB. That was abandoned for full 48-bit addressing which has a limit of 144 petabytes. There has never been a controller with a limit between those figures.

Perhaps you can find someone who is willing to categorically state that they've got a limit on their enclosures, and explain why. Until then I think I'll go with the assumption that people like Amazon have got it right.

**orphess** · 04-28-2009, 08:16 PM

Originally Posted by lynx

It looks to me as if the one from AC Ryan is exactly like the one I originally linked to.

Here's the same thing again, this time from Amazon, and with the explicit statement "No upper limit on HDD capacity".

My guess is that the page on AC Ryan is somewhat out of date (all the images in the "gallery" are missing), in which case there's a good possibility that they didn't expect drives in excess of 1TB any time soon. Just to back that idea up, one of the images is of the (defunct) USB/firewire version. notice that it is a tick factor - I think they probably wrote that when specifying 1024GB was bragging. It isn't even a limit which makes sense when talking about disk capacities. Couple that with the statement "supports all 3.5" harddisk up to 10000RPM" - another bragging statement. The disk speed isn't even measured by the interface so how could it be a limit? It just happened to be the speed of the fastest disks then available.

I've looked at several cases, in every instance where a limit is mentioned, the comment has been that there is no limit. With a Sata interface there really isn't any reason why there should be a limit. Even with a PATA interface the limit used to be 137GB. That was abandoned for full 48-bit addressing which has a limit of 144 petabytes. There has never been a controller with a limit between those figures.

Perhaps you can find someone who is willing to categorically state that they've got a limit on their enclosures, and explain why. Until then I think I'll go with the assumption that people like Amazon have got it right.

Thanks for taking the time and replying all these thoughts and findings of yours! Maybe what limits the size with some of the multi-disk casings is the integrated RAID-controller. The single disk ones... Well, I agree with you, it does seems strange that a standard SATA drive casing should have an upper limit at all.