SSD Drive Enclosure (SATA to USB)? (1 Viewer)

Figured I would find a secure external drive to put all my iTunes music on

I have 160GB of data

Amazon has this drive on sale today. Excellent price for a 256MB SSD

Is this the enclosure I would need to convert it to USB?

Willing to hear other suggestions

That enclosure would work, but I would recommend against getting it. It only has a USB 2.0 interface to the computer. That would be a bottleneck for a mechanical hard drive, and will almost certainly be a bottleneck for that SSD.

For a SSD, I would want the enclosure to have a Thunderbolt interface or a USB 3.0 interface to the computer, and for it to provide a SATA-3 (6.0 Gigabits per second) interface to the drive.

A search for "USB 3.0 drive enclosure" on Amazon turns up a number of inexpensive USB 3.0 enclosures, several of which are for notebook drives and/or are tool-free (like that USB 2.0 one you found).

There are a bunch of USB 3.0 notebook drive enclosures over on the Other World Computing site, too, although only a handful of those were inexpensive. NewEgg would be another place that you could look for enclosures.

Thomas,

Would you recommend one from Amazon that goes specifically with that drive?

Some of this is a little Chinese for me, though I completely understand the USB 3.0 necessity.

Thanks in advance for all your help

I'm looking at that drive, and Amazon is recommending things like an internal drive mounting kit for a notebook, empty cases for desktop computers, two optical drives, a boxed Intel CPU, and gaming video cards - but oddly enough, no external enclosures!

Re: the USB 3.0 / SATA iii notebook drive enclosures, I'm not familiar enough with the brands to say which are better. I see that 4- and 5-star ratings are common enough that I would be suspicious of any enclosure rated much less.

Some of the enclosures (the Inateck ones) claim to be "Optimized for SSD" with the explanation that they support "UASP". If the explanation is to be believed, UASP is an extension to the USB 3.0 protocol that can "accelerate read and write speed of SSD hard disk [sic]" up to "70% faster than traditional USB 3.0". Not that this is going to matter at all for iTunes Library use (except for the initial bulk move).

Thomas,

Can you pick one of them?

For a notebook-style enclosure, I'm going to say this one:

http://www.amazon.com/Optimized-Tool-Free-Inateck-External-Enclosure/dp/B00KYF1LLI/ref=sr_1_3?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1416140332&sr=1-3&keywords=USB+3.0+notebook+drive+enclosure

Click on the "New Release/Optimized For SSD" variant if that one does not come up pre-selected.

It covers the bases - USB 3.0, SATA-3, tool-free, inexpensive ($18), Windows & Mac compatibility, neutral color (black). Customers rated this one at 5 stars (one more star than its competitors), so although I don't know anything about the brand, that's the tie-breaker for me.

Thomas, thank you so much for your help. Much appreciated!

The 960gb version is only $390.

The M500 is an older model (I have one in my MacBook Pro), the MX100 is newer and only $10 more and has a little more space (M500=240GB, MX100=256). Also, be advised that as far as I know, there is no way to update the SSD's firmware while it is in an external enclosure.

On a Mac, with the M500, the SSD has to be attached to an internal SATA connector for the firmware update to work and you have to boot the Mac from the updater disc on a internal optical drive. An external optical won't work. If you have Windows setup under bootcamp, they do have a firmware updater that will run in Windows which works fine (that is what I used).

If it was me, given that this is just an iTunes library, I would probably just use a conventional external HD like the Western Digital Passport series. Maybe a second one for backup if needed.

-Keith

Keith,

THANK YOU SO MUCH!

I have the M500 in hand but had no idea that the MX100 is a newer version
with much better performance.

I am returning the former to Amazon and just placed my order for the MX100.

I ordered this drive enclosure as I am using it as an external. Works great.

I don't want a conventional HD drive for my valuable iTunes collection. Conventional
drives fail. SSD drives are less likely to (or at least that is how I understand it).

Ronald Epstein said:

I don't want a conventional HD drive for my valuable iTunes collection. Conventional
drives fail. SSD drives are less likely to (or at least that is how I understand it).

Click to expand...

Understood. There is the added advantage that an SSD would be much more useful if you decide you no longer need it for your original purpose. You can pop it out of the external enclosure and put it into a computer. I doubt I would bother doing that with a conventional HD, they are too slow and I am "SSD spoiled" these days.

-KeithP

Ronald Epstein said:

I don't want a conventional HD drive for my valuable iTunes collection. Conventional
drives fail. SSD drives are less likely to (or at least that is how I understand it).

Click to expand...

All drives can fail. The only real protection is to have backups. If you get one or two external notebook hard drives (say, in the 500 GB to 1 TB range), and back up your SSD on each, then your iTunes Library can survive a single-drive failure. (Notebook drives are handy for this kind of backup, since you don't have to go messing around with a temporary AC hookup for a drive that you're going to disconnect in a few minutes.)

Keep one of the backups off-site and your iTunes Library might survive a fire or a sharknado.

Keith Plucker said:

On a Mac, with the M500, the SSD has to be attached to an internal SATA connector for the firmware update to work and you have to boot the Mac from the updater disc on a internal optical drive. An external optical won't work.

Click to expand...

How are you supposed to do that on any new Mac (other than the non-Retina 13" MBP)?

Whether USB 2.0 or not really doesn't make much difference. Once you copy everything to the drive (and as cheap as drive space is today I'd go for at least 1 TB), USB is more than fast enough to keep up with audio files, be they mp3 or (my preference) wav.

As for the initial copy, start it before dinner and it'll be done by the time you finish dessert.

A previous poster's caution is well-founded -- get two drives and double back up. You're always safe that way.

Thomas Newton said:

All drives can fail.

Click to expand...

First, appreciate the advice, guys.

I dedicated quite a bit of time over the years ripping songs of 1,200+ CDs to iTunes.

I consider my iTunes library of 7,000 songs to be the most valuable data I own.

So, yes, I already have it backed up to more than one drive.

But I wanted to touch on Thomas' point that I quoted above....

Are you saying even SSD drives fail? With no moving parts, I would think it's just
one big flash memory module and pretty indestructible.

I don't know much about these things -- that is how I perceive it -- but would appreciate
the education nonetheless.

Ron - SSDs are built much better now than they were 7-8 years ago. Most new SSDs should outlive the computer they are installed in as long as you're not doing 24/7 enterprise data maintenance in a RAID array. Mechanical drives are still vastly superior for that. For what you, I and most people on HTF do, you should be just fine. As an aside, today I ordered an MX100 to replace the mechanical HDD in my mid-2012 MBP.

Let us know what you think about the SSD Ron. Your experience will be different than mine since I'm installing it as my primary boot device. Mine is scheduled to arrive Tuesday and I'll install it Wednesday and post my thoughts afterward.

Clinton,

The drive seems fine. Popped it in a case, hooked it externally via USB
to my iMac. I transferred my iTunes library over.

Just what I feel to be a more secure backup on a drive with no moving parts.

Thomas Newton said:

How are you supposed to do that on any new Mac (other than the non-Retina 13" MBP)?

Click to expand...

How indeed.

I would think at some point Crucial will either update their firmware software or drop "official" Mac support.

-Keith