Customer Reviews

Macally GS350SUAB Hi-Speed eSATA/1394A/1394B/USB2.0 Storage Enclosure for 3.5inch SATA HDD

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Out of the box, the enclosure looks great, easy to install a HD, but the weakness is the power supply. It ships with a 2A supply which is barely enough for todays drives. The result is the drive stops working after a while and you need to power-cycle the enclosure to get ti working again. This generally results in an OS error about disconnecting the device improperly and potential data loss. This was partially avoided by turning off the option in the OS to spin down hard disks when possible. However, after a few days of use it still failed to function. And you can tell the drive is not spinning when this happens.

There is a solution though! The Kinamax AD-LCD12 LCD Monitors 12V 6A 72W AC Adapter Power Supply can be used instead of the included PSU. This gives 6A to the enclosure. I haven't had a problem since. So 4 to 4.5 stars for the enclosure itself, 1 star for the included PSU. You shouldn't have to buy one separate, Macally.

One of the best looking external HDD enclosure. Period, NOT (sorry..^^). Specification-wise, this enclosure is very good, except the fact that it does not provide a daisy chain of Firewire800, since it only has one FW800 port. I gave only one star for "Ease of Use" category, since this enclosure disconnects itself for some reason and the time-machine on my Mac Mini fails very often, which slows down my Mac OS . The only remedy for this was disconnecting/re-connecting power cable. Every time this happens, I also checked the integrity of the enclosed HDD, but the disc did not have any problem. I contacted the customer service (very prompt response from them, I liked that.), but they did not seem to know the reason for that. BTW, I also tried other power adapter with different current output, as other reviewer mentioned on the web, but I experienced nothing different. I just returned the enclosure for something else after one-month-usage, and now I don't have such cut-off problem. I still do not know the reason for the problem, but for now I would not recommend this product, till they find solution for disconnection. Since this enclosure does not have a fan, it can get very hot, if you do not use automatic HDD sleep. For a final word, did I mentioned that this enclosure looks gorgeous? For some, this is definitely the reason to buy this enclosure, though. I don't blame you. ^^

it's a very nice-looking design. it caught my eye because it looks like a mini mac pro. I had to have FireWire 800 and this was cheaper than others that also had FireWire. this is my 2nd macally enclosure and the other one I've had for a few years is still going strong. I also have a macally keyboard that has really nice clicking, but I digest....

cons: there is only 1 FireWire 800 port which means if I have to daisychain, this has to be the caboose. not a showstopper though. it comes with 2 kinds of stands: plastic extensions you screw on horizontally or a metal clip-like stand. I tried the clip stand first and did not like how easily the enclosure could slide in it. the stand's bottom is slide-proof from whatever it's on, but the enclosure itself slides pretty easily on the clip -- too easily in my opinion. I may try the 2 plastic extensions next even though they don't look as cool. the power adapter seems bigger than it needs to be, which means there can be some plug management issues at the power strip. but maybe that's a safety thing.

pros: it works, so that's a good start. installation was fairly simple for a guy that doesn't like manual labor. the power button is nice to have. pluggng and unplugging my laptop makes it necessary to eject the drives. and when I return to plug the drives back in, they don't always get mounted on my mac. so having a convenient power button is easier than unplugging the power cord like I do with my seagate free agent (Seagate FreeAgent Desk 1.5 TB USB 2.0 Port External Hard Drive for Mac-Silver ST315005FJA105-RK not sure if this is exactly the one i have but it's darn close) which does not have a power button.

I've had this enclosure for less than a month, but I like it so far.

I recently purchased a Mac Pro (2009) computer and was pleasantly surprised to discover that Macally made an external enclosure that is an exact copy of my computer, except in miniature.

Upon receipt of the enclosure, I slipped a 500 GB WD HD into the case, and in a matter of minutes, the Mac had recognized the external enclosure and I was ready to go.

The enclosure appears to be of heavy duty alum. and extremely well made. Even under heavy video editing use, I detected no excessive heat build-up.

The unit receives more 'wow, look at that' comments than the computer itself. I have had the unit for two weeks now, and am thinking of getting another one for a 1 TB HD.

It was purchased at Amazon, and with complete satisfaction.

The important thing to note about this enclosure that I didn't see mentioned elsewhere is that it comes with all the cables you'd expect, including a Firewire 800 cable! It's refreshing to know you won't have to spend extra on cables, as you do with some other competitors, after spending so much on a the enclosure.

The performance is impressively faster than my USB 2.0 external drive, as I'd expect, and I liked the style of the enclosure and how its metal body acts as a simple heatsink, not completely unlike my MacBook.

I use use this enclosure along with a 1 TB WD GreenPower drive to run two simultaneous VMWare virtual machines (both Windows 2008 servers, one with SharePoint and SQL Server) and it works great!

This FireWire 800 enclosure is everything I was hoping for. The best part is that it does NOT spindown (sleep) the hard drive on its own. So many external drive enclosures now have a built-in function that spins down the hard drive inside when it has not been accessed in a while. (This is an internal function that overrides the operating system setting for drive spindown.) While drive sleep is good for longevity, there are many scenarios in which it causes more annoyance than it's worth. I can't stand switching to the Finder and encountering a beach ball activity wheel spinning because the OS is waiting for an external drive to spinup. If you also don't like this delay, then do not buy any external drives from Seagate, Maxtor, Western Digital, et al. They all do this now. I would instead buy this MacAlly enclosure and put the bare / internal drive of your choosing inside of it. FYI, the enclosure works fine with Seagate 1.5TB drives, and it does a good job of releasing the tremendous heat these drives produce. But I _still_ have to have a fan blowing on this drive enclosure in order to keep the 1.5 terabyte drive inside happy and malfunction free (as soon as it gets hot, it starts having read/write errors). That's certainly not MacAlly's fault. Seagate needs to stop shipping 1.5TB drives that aren't ready for prime time. One last thought... This drive case comes with a wall wart transformer -- one of those little bastards that renders so many outlets in your power strip useless. I'll be curious to see if this power supply lasts in the long-term.

I have yet to find a USB/E-SATA/1394 enclosure that will actually stay connected for months at a time without a hiccup. This enclosure seems to work better than the really cheap ones available (especially the USB/E-SATA only ones). I was using it as a time machine back up disk, but occasionally time machine would claim it's not connected. Unplugging and replugging it would usually solve the problem, or powering it off and back on if that didn't work certainly did. For most people, if you power your computer on and off daily, it will probably work perfectly. I leave mine on all the time as it acts as a media, web and email server. Performance wise, since I've got a Mac, I was using the 1394B port, where it was able to get close to the theoretical 80mb/s limit of the interface. It certainly looks better than most of the other enclosures available, I just wish it didn't flake out as often.

I bought two of these units from Amazon. Both of their FW800 ports failed within a few times of use. I sent one of the units back for RMA. They sent me a new one. After just one hour of transferring data via the FW800 port the port died. I will never buy another Maccally product. They look great but die on you very quickly.

I know some people would,'t buy and enclosure without vent, but this little friend it's very quiet and (even without vent) it stays pretty cool. I'll trully recommend (I even thinking of buying another one)

Respect!

I needed additional storage for my Time Machine backups of my 27" iMac. I already had a couple of old Firewire 400 drives, but they are too small for Time Machine. I like the look of the Macally box. It was extremely easy to set up. I chose a WD Black 2TB drive to go into the case. From the time I opened the packing boxes for the case and drive, I was up and running in less than 10 minutes - and I took my time. The only negative I have is that there is no pass-through FW800 port. Although I only have the one FW800 drive, I anticipate buying another in the next few months. At that point I'll either have to make sure the next device has a pass-through FW800 port or buy a FW hub.

It's a smart looking case, and, yes, the blue power light is BRIGHT!!! As for heat, it's been running for a couple of days now and the case is only slightly warm to the touch - an advantage of having an aluminum vs. plastic case.

I went ahead and bought the $14.99 6amp power supply as another reviewer suggested. I don't know if the stock unit would have worked or not, but I figured that for $15 it would be worth it to bypass the potential problem.

I would absolutely recommend this. As I mentioned above, the biggest drawback is the lack of FW800 pass-through. If you aren't planning on daisy-chaining FW800 drives, then this is a 5-star product.