Talk:Disk enclosure

Merger completed!
This page was created to merge USB enclosure, external hard drive, and the article's old namesake into a single unified article, covering all external drives other than those covered in keydrive. The intro was rewritten from scratch to include every major point made in each of the articles. All the sections other than "Benefits" originated in one article or the other, and were only updated and expanded upon. Hopefully I didn't miss anything, but if you catch a point I didn't move over, please call me on it or fix it. Thanks! MrZaius talk  18:18, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Old comment from Talk:USB enclosure
The link: How External Hard Drive Enclosures Work doesn't really say anything about "How External Hard Drive Enclosures Work"! I'll see if I can find something more useful. Gabe 02:10, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

Old discussion from Talk:External hard drive
The following discussion was in response to the proposed merger of Disk enclosure into External hard drive. I implemented the merge, but in the opposite direction, to make it more inclusive of floppy and optical drives. See above. MrZaius talk  18:23, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Merge Discussion

 * Absolutely not. These are completely different ideas. An external hard drive typically refers to just a single drive while a disk enclosure can contain many drives (I've seen as many as 15 but there are probably some that hold more). --Pboyd04 21:52, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Personally, I think this is being looked at backwards. USB_enclosure and External hard drive should have been merged into the now deleted |disk enclosure.  If I have time over the next couple of days, I'll take a stab at doing just that.  External hard-drives, disk enclosures, and USB enclosures all refer to the same thing, but only the terms Disk Enclosure or External Disk Enclosure are inclusive enough to cover their use w/optical drives.
 * On a related note, will also redirect USB CDROM, USB DVD-ROM, USB DVD, USB HDD, USB Hard Drive, USB DVD Burner, USB CD Burner, and External CDROM, External DVD-ROM, External DVD, External HDD, External Hard Drive, External DVD Burner, External CD Burner there.
 * MrZaius talk  17:19, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Unmerging compelted
I unmerged external hard disk drive topic form disk enclosure, because the latter is only a part of what makes the former. huji— TALK 11:44, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

Suggestions: Speed and height.
Thank you for having this article.

I came here after looking up 2.5" enclosure on my local e-store, hoping to find some clarity surrounding height. I saw references to 9mm and 13mm, perhaps surrounding SSD's. Expanding your "While laptop hard drives are today generally of the 9.5 mm high variant" a bit may be useful. (I had hoped in coming to wikipedia I could find out what range of sizes were out there to know what the max is to 'future proof' any purchase.)

I happened to come across an article the other day, https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/FromUSBStick, and what caught my eye was the "Notes about speed" section. In particular USB 2 being faster than CD/DVD-ROM, which is faster than USB 1.1. I also see "it seems that there are no really fast pendrives below 16 GB" [perhaps witnessed by common product descriptions noting read/write speeds nowadays, perhaps once the product specs exceed some criteria (?). Perhaps expanding a paragraph in this article surrounding (relative) speeds may be useful. [Perhaps it's arguable that a SD(XC?) -> USB adapter is an 'enclosure'?]

"Native drive interfaces" ... eSatap: As far as I know, no drive natively takes esatap - have you mixed drive interfaces with enclosure interfaces in esatap's case?

"Direct attach serial interfaces" is perhaps where esatap should be. I would also suggest that you recommend people be careful - I have, for an example, an enclosure with a sata, not esata connector. Discovered only upon arriving home with the new purchase. I was able to deal with it, but wish I had known to keep an eye out for such when I was in the store.

"Network protocols" - I think you are mixing things here. e.g. Although CIFS is a network protocol, it is enclosure independent. Protocol and enclosure are all but distinct and independent terms. I get and appreciate the inclusion here, but perhaps a little rework is due: A network (not native / USB / (e)Sata, as you distinguish elsewhere) enclosure may provide access via such protocols [but that is a function of the software included/on the enclosure, not the physical enclosure itself, and this article seems to mostly deal with the physicality of the enclosure], but not a non-networked enclosure, where it is the hosting computer's facility that allows any enclosure attached storage to be externally (network) accessed.

The article is in some ways written as a buyer's guide, or at least a list of criterias to be considered when evaluating an enclosure - and that is VERY much appreciated. However, on that basis, and given the at least summary discussion surrounding speed, perhaps references to SD and USB key speeds would be useful?

Thanks for listening.

BS (talk) 18:44, 6 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Hello! Your suggestions sound good, how about editing the article yourself?  Once you're done, I or someone else will review the changes and do any further improvements, if necessary. &mdash; Dsimic (talk | contribs) 11:00, 8 December 2014 (UTC)

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Hard Drive Shucking
Though I didn't write nor remove the following from the article, I decided to place a copy of it here, just in case anyone wants to discuss it. I'm aware of the term only because I read the DataHoarder subreddit. More information is here. • Sbmeirow  •  Talk  • 03:58, 13 April 2020 (UTC)

""Shucking" refers to the process of purchasing an external hard disk drive and removing the drive from its enclosure, in order for it to be used as an internal disk drive. This is performed because external drives are often cheaper than internal drives of the same capacity and model, and that external drives designed for continuous usage often contain hard drives designed for increased reliability. https://www.howtogeek.com/324769/how-to-get-premium-hard-drives-for-cheap-by-shucking-external-drives/"