HDD 3.5 Enclosure

[jjtoymachine]

Hi,

I have been looking at the Vantec Nexstar 3 Hard Drive enclosure. At it looks awesome and everything, but uses an external power-supply so you have to blug it into the wall =.= that kind of ruins the portability of it. Are there any 3.5' enclosures that are powered through USB?? I think most of the 2.5' enclosures are USB powered but the price of a 2.5' hard drive is quite expensive. And i mean if my canon scanner can be powered by USB then why cant you power a 3.5 Hard drive?

 

[Azrael]

Hi,

I have been looking at the Vantec Nexstar 3 Hard Drive enclosure. At it looks awesome and everything, but uses an external power-supply so you have to blug it into the wall =.= that kind of ruins the portability of it. Are there any 3.5' enclosures that are powered through USB?? I think most of the 2.5' enclosures are USB powered but the price of a 2.5' hard drive is quite expensive. And i mean if my canon scanner can be powered by USB then why cant you power a 3.5 Hard drive?

The reason 3.5" Drives can't be powered from USB is that they require 12v for operation - which the USB port cannot provide. But notebook HDD's use 5v - that can be drawn from the USB port without a problem.

Would be great if there's something out there that gets rid of the extra PSU...but I haven't seen any alternative methods of getting power from the PC through external ports :/

 

[jjtoymachine]

the reason i wanted a 3.5 is because i had an extra hard drive lying around doing nothing. guess i will have to have a look at the 2.5' selection then

 

[ebendl]

Hi,

I have been looking at the Vantec Nexstar 3 Hard Drive enclosure. At it looks awesome and everything, but uses an external power-supply so you have to blug it into the wall =.= that kind of ruins the portability of it. Are there any 3.5' enclosures that are powered through USB?? I think most of the 2.5' enclosures are USB powered but the price of a 2.5' hard drive is quite expensive. And i mean if my canon scanner can be powered by USB then why cant you power a 3.5 Hard drive?

Well, you can still throw it easily enough in your boot when going to a mate's house. And since you do have the drive available...

What you can do is look for one with a built-in PSU, then you only need a kettle-plug. Bit more portable (even though the enclosure gets bigger).