Customer Reviews

Acomdata Samba USB 2.0 3.5-Inch IDE/SATA Hard Drive Enclosure SMBXXXU2E-BLK (Black)

5 star:		(79)
4 star:		(40)
3 star:		(15)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(14)

 

 

This enclosure is solidly built, finely finished, with good fit for 3.5" internal hard drives of various brands, and easily to assemble. It offers IDE or SATA to USB 2.0 interfaces. The blue colored part is an aluminum case that helps dissipate the drive heat without cooling fan noises (the remainder gray parts are plastic). There are three popular colors in matte finish to choose from: red, blue, and black. The vertical stand is attached to the enclosure by a groove and two screws for added stability. The blue indicator light is an approximate match to the blue color of the enclosure case.

I used a Seagate IDE 250GB and a Hitachi SATA 500GB in the enclosure for the trials. Windows XP and Windows Vista readily recognized the assembled external hard drives. They were shown as USB devices with their respective hard drive product numbers and not the identity of the enclosure chipset. This could be important as some hard drive's proprietary software, such as Seagate DiscWizard, require the presence of the branded hard drive in order to be run. The data transfer was reliable, whether the file size was 2MB (photo files) or 49GB (a backup file). The data transfer rates were normal if not a little faster compared to my other external hard drives. The drives never got hot, just slightly warm during the data transfer or after being left on overnight.

I am particular about the position of the power switch. I do not buy any enclosure which power switch is jammed in between the power cable and the USB cable. This enclosure has the power switch conveniently located above the cables.

The tray that houses the hard drive is plastic, preventing the hard drive from making direct contact with the aluminum case for more effective heat dissipation. The side panel with the circuit board and internal connectors is screwed to the plastic hard drive tray, making frequent drive changes a risk of unthreading the screw holes.

Overall I am fond of this external hard drive enclosure, for its nice design and finish, dual internal hard drive interfaces, aluminum case, and reliable data transfer. I am using the Hitachi SATA 500GB in this enclosure permanently. I have also acquired a red for a 640GB SATA.

I'm so disappointed! All these good reviews for this thing, and it doesn't work right. Let me say here that I tried it with my HP desktop and Dell laptop and get exactly the same results. Specifically:

I hooked it up per the instructions, turned it on, and... nothing. The computer didn't even see it. So I unplugged the USB cable and when I plugged it back in, the computer saw it and it came up. Great! Turned it off, turned it back on... nothing.

After MUCH experimentation I found that the drive must be powered on BEFORE being plugged in to the computer, which is not only contrary to the instructions, it's just stupid. It means you either have to let the drive spin constantly (stupid) or you have to disconnect the drive from the computer every time you turn it off (again, stupid).

If you leave the drive spinning, you can connect and disconnect the USB cable all you want, it recognizes it every time.

Makes no difference whether or not you properly unmount the drive before turning if off.

All the good things people have said about the instructions and the ease of putting it together are true but it doesn't really matter because as far as I'm concerned, this is a deal-breaker. I've written to Acomdata and will wait for their response but unless they have a REALLY GOOD idea, this enclosure is going back.

Update 6-16-10.

Several reviews here have mentioned that the jumper had to be set to CS, not master as the instructions say. That was my problem. After I changed the jumper, it works perfectly.

The Acomdata support people obviously don't know about this; they told me to send the drive back. Instead, I remembered about the jumper and tried it. It works great now. (I have told them about it, but don't look for them to re-print their instruction manuals.)

Why am I leaving my rating at 1 star? If I hadn't found out about the jumper, I'd have sent the drive back ($$), probably gotten another one which, of course, wouldn't have worked either, then sent it back. (More $$) If my 1 star rating makes people look at this review, it can save some people a lot of trouble.

I tried this with both an old PATA/IDE and a new SATA drive; both worked flawlessly. The IDE drive required a jumper setting to "Master"; no jumpers were required for the SATA (WD Caviar). The printed manual is a lot better than what one usually sees with this type of product, but not as complete as the documentation on the included CD-ROM.

pros: very quiet, fanless, good build quality for the price, nice stand. Looks better than most enclosures.

cons: IDE connector is mounted on the PCB board, so you have to be a bit careful. The blue light is rather glaring.

COMPARISON REVIEW for Acomdata Samba USB 2.0 3.5-Inch IDE/SATA Hard Drive Enclosure SMBXXXU2E-BLU (Blue) and Vantec NexStar CX NST-300S2-BK 3.5-Inch SATA to USB 2.0 External Hard Drive Enclosure (Black)

I recently swapped out two 750 GB Seagate SATA drives from my HP Mediasmart Servers and replaced them with 2 TB WD Green drives (WD20EADS). I wanted to convert those two Seagate drives into external drives for backup purposes using USB drive enclosures. I had bought several enclosures a while ago, so I had to do the research to figure out which were better these days. My criteria were (1) not expensive (drives are so cheap today that an expensive enclosure sort of defeats the purpose of re-using old drives if you want to be cost-effective since you can just buy a new external drive for not much more than the fancier enclosures); (2) easy to assemble without the stress of thinking you are breaking something or somehow degrading the performance of the drive; (3) it just works (the occasionally elusive ease of the "plug and play" ideal). Also, a personal preference, I wanted a physical on/off switch and not a "touch-sensitive" electronic switch (like that found on the Macally G-S350SU Hi-Speed eSata/USB2.0 External Storage Enclosure for 3.5inch SATA HDD) or no switch. Finally, I also wanted good heat dissipation and vibration control.

After research, I purchased two enclosures: (a) Acomdata Samba USB 2.0 3.5-Inch IDE/SATA Hard Drive Enclosure SMBXXXU2E-BLU (Blue) and (b) Vantec NexStar CX NST-300S2-BK 3.5-Inch SATA to USB 2.0 External Hard Drive Enclosure (Black). The Acomdata Samba enclosure was more expensive than the Vantec (although I only expect to use these enclosures for SATA drives and did not need the flexibility of being able to install IDE/PATA drives, if you do, only the Acomdata Samba enclosure has that flexibility). The Acomdata Samba enclosure was okay to assemble, I found that it was a tight fit in the case, the extra IDE/PATA connector did get in the way of the other components of the circuit board when I pushed the drive in, there is a metal top which does not obviously fit well with the rest of the case, and most problematic in my experience, my front fascia fell off while I was installing the drive and then when I put the drive in, it almost fell through the entire enclosure, I had to press the front fascia with significant force to snap it back in, but once i did that there was a secure fit. No big danger since I was careful, but a bit startling. Once assembled, the drive seems secure and the overall look is nice (I got the blue one, there are three colors available now on Amazon.com). Plugged everything in and the Acomdata Samba enclosure just works as hoped.

The Vantec enclosure was 37% less expensive at the time of my purchase and this model only has the ability to work with SATA drives (like the ones I had). The Vantec enclosure was easy to assemble and easier than the Acomdata. There is no PATA connector to get in the way, there was no extra flimsy thin metal top to the circuit board and there is no snap-in front fascia to fall off. It seems a simpler set-up with two pieces (1) a circuit board permanently attached to the back fascia and (2) the encasing around the drive. Like the Acomdata you use four screws to attach the drive to the circuit board. With the Vantec you do have to plug in a little connector to attach the drive to the LED light. The connector seems pretty flimsy, but connected fine. The screws used to attach the back fascia to the case on the Vantec were tiny! I was concerned that they are easily stripped and I barely had a phillips screwdriver small enough to fit in the indentation where those back fascia screws were supposed to go.

Once completed, the Vantec also seems secure. Plugged it in and it also worked well as expected. Both enclosures come with the bright blue LED lights with the Acomdata having the bigger and brighter light (looks kinda like a little Cylon, though with an unmoving blue eye). The Vantec comes only in Black at the time of my purchase from Amazon.com and has in my opinion cheesier-looking logos and design than the Acomdata (although I personally could not care less and IMHO find the look of enclosures irrelevant to my own purchase decision). The completed Vantec enclosure is somewhat smaller than the Acomdata enclosure. I like the Acomdata on/off switch better, it is a rocker switch, versus the push-button toggle on/off switch of the Vantec. They both seem fine on the heat dissipation and vibration control front as far as I can tell. They both get slightly warm in a similar way (they have the same make and model Seagate drives in them). Please note that both enclosures do not have a fan (which I tend not to like because the cheaper fans can be too loud for me, although obviously they would improve air flow in the enclosures).

Anyway, although neither enclosure is perfect, in the end I was actually quite happy with both of them and can recommend them both (I wanted to be clear and picky for this review, but both are serving my purposes well). I give the edge to the Vantec since it is cheaper and easier to assemble overall. Five stars for the Vantec enclosure and four stars for the Acomdata Samba. Hope this comparison review helps!

I recently bought several of these. At first I was very happy with the them. The build quality seemed very nice, they were solid.

Then I noticed the heat, it wasn't significant but it was enough for me to take a closer look. The drives never spun down! I asked acomdata tech support about it and never received a response. I was concerned this could lead to premature failure, not to mention the extra heat added to the room and higher power usage.

I ended up returning them all and purchased another brand.

Also, just a minor gripe, the blue LEDs on the front were INSANELY bright. I had to either point them away or put electrical tape over the light, which is what I did. Even then, a surprising amount of blue light made it's way through the vents and illuminated the room at night.

First count: when run with an EIDE (or PATA) hard drive, this unit does not run like an external USB drive. Specifically, if you start the computer with the drive already running it will not mount the hard drive. You have to boot up your computer and then start the Acomdata external drive. This is not like an integral external USB drive which starts when the computer starts, sleeps ("stands by") when the computer sleeps, et cetera. If you forget and left it running while you restarted your computer after installing Windows security updates, for example, you have to shut the computer down, turn off the drive, reboot the computer, and then turn on the Acomdata external drive. In other words, it is a pain, and a disappointment for those of us who thought we could covert large EIDE hard drives we had from previous computers into convenient backup storage via a makeshift external USB hard drive for our new SATA computers.

Second count: no technical help. I contacted Acomdata to see if the EIDE drive issue, above, was normal or if there was something wrong with my particular unit. They collected my contact information twice, and I don't know why they bothered, because literally a week later I have yet to get contacted by anyone.

Third count: Although this unit does work like an integral external USB drive when a SATA hard drive is installed, it lacks the quality, performance, and value for the money of other choices available on Amazon.com. In particular, the "Thermaltake N0012USU" Thermaltake N0012USU Max 4 Active Cooling 3.5-Inch USB 2.0 eSATA Hard Drive Enclosure offers both USB and eSATA, a cooling fan, an included eSATA adapter kit from your computer, and a much more rugged, durable, and secure internal hard drive interface, and all this comes for less than 50% more cost than the Acomdata unit. The eSATA interface is much faster and still goes into and out of Windows sleep mode. The adapter kit includes a SATA cable to run from a spare SATA port on your motherboard to a slot plate which has a SATA to eSATA connector feeding through it, and then an eSATA cable to run from that connector on the rear of your computer to the hard disk drive (it also has a longer USB cable than comes with the Acomdata). The fan obviously keeps it cooler. The eSATA adapter looks a lot like Amazon.com's "Cables To Go 13423" Cables To Go 13423 Serial ATA to External Serial ATA Dual Port Adapter (Nickel) except that it has only one cable - so you see that this adapter is worth about $11 more in price than the Acomdata all by itself and that $11 accounts for most of the $14 price difference between the two units. Thermaltake does not service EIDE drives but then neither does the Acomdata for practical purposes, as noted above.

I purchased two of these to use with 120GB 3.5" IDE drives, and here's my thoughts:

PROS:

- Looks nice, exterior is tightly constructed with no overhanging edges.

- Quiet (no fan)

- No problems being initially recognized by Win7 or MacOS 10.6.2

CONS:

- Like several others have stated, the interior tolerances are TIGHT. The major irritant is the metal shield that goes into place over the hard drive; there's no snapping or securing fastener for the shield, you just have to slide it into place around the drive, but the cramped quarters cause the excess cable to push up on the shield. Just when you feel you have one side in place, the other side slips out. Very irritating to work with, but if you don't plan to constantly swap drives out of it, you should be OK.

- This just happened a few minutes ago with one of the enclosures; while copying 20GB of data to the drive in MacOS, it disappeared. I turned it off and back on again, and it reappeared. Then it immediately did it a 2nd time while reattempting the copy session. Don't know what this means yet, but I'll be watching closely.

- The rear plate that secures the interior tray only came with two screws in place but four holes. There are extra screws leftover from the installation instructions, and the instructions didn't mention them. They don't seem to be threaded for those holes, and I'll probably give it a shot eventually, but it's just weird.

NOTES:

- As the instructions mention, make sure you set your drives to be "Master" before installing them. I had a jumper in the wrong spot and I didn't get an error in Win7, it just installed the drivers but didn't appear as a drive letter. The Windows disk administration utility prompted me to reinitialize the drive, which was the only indicator I got that my jumper was set wrong.

It's still a good enclosure, but I definitely don't recommend it for someone planning to swap drives in and out frequently.

After getting taken over by an authorized MAC servicer to hear yes your computer is dead, I went on line and goggled how to get my info from my dead tower. One of the recommendations was simple pull the hard drive and buy a case. My first attempt was from Best Buy, told guy what we needed, got home it was the wrong thing. Went on Amazon found the right case for a third of the cost. It was easy to do and we got all our pictures and stuff off the drive. Here's the best part we now use it as an external hard drive.

I bought this to store backed up games for use with my Wii. The Wii requires USB 2. Plain and simple this enclosure doesn't work with it when other USB 2 enclosures do. Other USB 2 enclosures pop up the message "This device would perform better plugged into a USB 2 port" when they are plugged into my PC with USB 1 ports, this one does not. If I hadn't needed USB 2 and this didn't claim to be, I would have given it a better rating. It works well, stays pretty cool. The only things I don't like about it is the IDE connection position is fixed so an old drive I have didn't match up, and the SATA connections are really cramped.

I bought this item primarily for the purpose of wiping old hard drives. It works just fine and is very sturdy on the outside. However, it could be better built and sturdier on the inside. Having said that, it should do fine for most people who just want an enclosure for converting an internal drive to an external drive.