Amazon.com: Customer reviews: Macally G-S350SUA Hi-Speed eSATA/FireWire/USB2.0 Storage Enclosure for 3.5-Inch SATA HDD

Top positive review

Macally G-S350SUA Is a great HDD Enclosure

Reviewed in the United States on October 3, 2009

I purchased the Macally enclosure along with a Western Digital Caviar Black 1 TB disk drive. The enclosure is sturdy, well made and has some weight to it (being cast aluminum). The drive was extremely easy to install in the case tray, and the 4 screws for mounting were included. Also included were a Firewire 400 cable and a USB cable. Both cables were good quality and both had the ferrite core surrounding the cables to reduce/eliminate unwanted signal interference. The enclosure has no fan, but seems to dissipate the heat from the hard drive extremely well. Since I've installed it I've been running the drive hard copying my other drive to the new one, and it's barely warm to the touch, but you can feel warmth in the air surrounding it, so I'm very pleased with the design. I've seen comments about vibration and rattling problems, but I don't have any, and with the construction of the unit I don't see how the case would cause any noise if assembled properly. There were also some complaints of the cables not fitting well into the back. Mine are snug. Also the complaints about the back plate being plastic are unfounded. The plate just surrounds the input and power ports, but does not have anything to do with the structure of the enclosure. The screws in the back attach the interior tray to the body of the enclosure, so even if the back plastic case broke or cracked, the unit would not be affected. Overall I am very happy with the unit, and hope that it keeps working as well as it is well into the future. I'm planning on buying a 2nd one after I've stressed this one for a month or so (with a Samsung drive - the WD is noisy).

One person found this helpful

Top critical review

Critical reviews›

HAL lives!

Looks cool, but isn't... "cool."

Reviewed in the United States on June 12, 2011

First of all I'll say I think these drive cases look absolutely fantastic, with a very clean Apple inspired - I'm sure! - industrial design. I'm a PC user so have no interest in the Firewire, but bought it for the eSATA/USB connectivity.

I currently have 2 of theG-Tech'sbut have just re-organized my system and needed an additional 2TB external drive; I have a spareCaviar Blackso just needed a case.

As an aside Macally makes theG-S350SU eSATA/USB2 casebut it contains a "Power Saving" routine that spins down the drive after a certain period of time and cannot be overridden; I'm a photographer and will be working from the drive, I don't want it spinning down or hibernating unless I say so.

The Pros: The drive looks fantastic and certainly doesn't look out of place next to the G-Tech's. Installing the HD was very simple, just open the case, put the drive into the carrier, slide it onto the SATA connections, then lock it into place with the four supplied screws; quite elegant actually! The case powers the 2TB Caviar without any problems.

The Cons: The case is noisier than the G-Tech, and there was a slight "buzz" in the background from the case itself; it wasn't just the sound of the drive spinning up or being accessed. To be honest this is not something I couldn't have lived with if I had to, but what killed it for me, as I hinted at in the review title, was the issue of heat dissipation, or should I say the LACK of heat dissipation!

I installed the drive, started transferring some data, then left for a couple of hours to run some errands. When I got back I checked on the progress of the transfer, and touched the case out of interest to see how "warm" it was; to my surprise the case wasn't warm, it was hot, VERY hot! I decided to put the drive into one of the G-Tech cases, and that's when I got a second, even nastier surpise... after opening the case I found the drive itself was actually too hot to handle!!! :(

After running the drive for 4-5 hours inside the G-Tech case, the case itself was no warmer to the touch than when I'd run the 1TB drive it came with, then just out of interest I put the 1TB drive into the Macally case and ran it for a few hours; while it was warmer than the G-Tech, it wasn't worryingly so.

This is one of the few instances where I've taken advantage of Amazon's fantastic Returns Service, and it looks as if I'm going to have to spring for one of the ruinously expensiveG-Tech's! LOL!

All in all I'd say the Macally is a terrific case for the price, but if you're looking to put a 7200rpm 2TB drive in it you might want to think twice.

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Joe

Macally G-S350SUA Is a great HDD Enclosure

Reviewed in the United States on October 3, 2009

Verified Purchase

One person found this helpful

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BrianZ

Working Well With 2T Drive & Win XP Via Firewire

Reviewed in the United States on September 20, 2011

Verified Purchase

Just got this MacAlly G-S350SUA 3.5" SATA Firewire/USB case for a Western Digital 2 Terabyte WD20EARS Green Drive and it appears to be working fine and running cool via Firewire connection to a Gateway FX530XM desktop PC running Windows XP. I avoided alignment issues with this "Advanced Format" hard drive running under WinXP that would normally require either installing a jumper on drive pins 7-8 or running the WD alignment software if formatted under WinXP, by first connecting the drive in this enclosure via USB cable to a netbook running Win7 and using the Win7 disk management utility to create a single partition that I plan to use for system backups and photo storage. I selected the "MBR" type for the new partition to allow Win7 to make sectors already aligned and compatible with WinXP. I also ran the long disk scan for bad sectors to verify disk integrity. All went fine with no errors, and the enclosure and drive were moved to the WinXP machine and connected via a firewire port. The formatted drive capacity is reported as 1.81 TB, as expected.

The WinXP Backup utility has now been running continuously for about four hours so far to create a backup copy of my primary C: drive (at a rate of about 30GB/hr), and the case of the drive enclosure is only slightly warm to the touch. This was expected, as this variable speed green drive has a maximum startup power consumption of well under the case's 2amp rated power supply, and well under 1 amp while running. This is a 4 y/o PC, and I'm not that concerned about transfer rates or access time for my purposes, so I didn't really need the other MacAlly model with the faster firewire port or a faster hard drive. I also still have a 4 y/o MacAlly PHR-100AC case, which is similar except made for older IDE drives, and it's still running fine. The only problem I ever had with the older 100AC case was when the recent hurricane Irene knocked out our power for a week, and the surge when it first tried to come back on three times in quick succession before it stayed off, had damaged the power supply brick used in the middle of that power cord. The drive enclosure was fine though, because it works with a new power cord/brick. The same power surge also knocked out the oil heater circuit of our home's Trane A/C compressor in the outdoor unit. The power cord for this enclosure does not have a brick in the middle, but has the a/c adapter box on the plug end, though it is smaller and I would expect less expensive to replace if needed.

My only complaint is minor. My old MacAlly IDE firewire drive enclosure has an on/off toggle switch on the back panel where the ports are located, but on this enclosure it is "hidden" on the front. Not being a Mac user and because of its different styling versus my familiarity with the old style case, it was not obvious to me at first that the light on the front also doubles as an on/off button, so I was surprised that the unit did not power up when first plugged in. I'm also not sure I like the idea of a push button as an on/off switch, as it makes me wonder if it could be inadvertently switched off more easily than the old style slide switch.

The two tiny screws which appear to be intended for installing the two plastic "feet" did not seem to be a good fit for the screw holes on the bottom of the case (or maybe it was the holes that were the problem), but these feet seem to be optional since the case also includes a saddle style stand for holding it upright without screws. I didn't find any instructions for installing these, but I didn't bother using them and instead used their matching rubber stick-on pads by cutting each one to about 3/4 of their length to fit two strips inside the bottom of the saddle for extra cushioning, then used the two smaller leftover pieces to stick on the bottom of each end of the case over the screw holes where the feet would have been attached. It seems to sit well like this and has no obvious noise that I can detect other than normal hard drive sounds, which I can only hear by putting my ear within a few inches.

I am satisfied with my purchase so far, as well as with my other 4 y/o MacAlly case. It was easy to install the SATA hard drive (no cable required), and the enclosure appears to work well with my system (and without the need for any software or driver installation) for use as an external file storage area, and I had no issues using it along with the other USB or firewire devices connected to my system, which now has 3 internal SATA hard drives, two 1TB external USB drives, a 400GB external Firewire IDE drive, and now a 2TB external firewire drive. I will be adding at least one more external firewire drive. Materials appear to be good quality at a good price.

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HAL lives!

Looks cool, but isn't... "cool."

Reviewed in the United States on June 12, 2011

Verified Purchase

First of all I'll say I think these drive cases look absolutely fantastic, with a very clean Apple inspired - I'm sure! - industrial design. I'm a PC user so have no interest in the Firewire, but bought it for the eSATA/USB connectivity.

I currently have 2 of the G-Tech's but have just re-organized my system and needed an additional 2TB external drive; I have a spare Caviar Black so just needed a case.

As an aside Macally makes the G-S350SU eSATA/USB2 case but it contains a "Power Saving" routine that spins down the drive after a certain period of time and cannot be overridden; I'm a photographer and will be working from the drive, I don't want it spinning down or hibernating unless I say so.

The Pros: The drive looks fantastic and certainly doesn't look out of place next to the G-Tech's. Installing the HD was very simple, just open the case, put the drive into the carrier, slide it onto the SATA connections, then lock it into place with the four supplied screws; quite elegant actually! The case powers the 2TB Caviar without any problems.

The Cons: The case is noisier than the G-Tech, and there was a slight "buzz" in the background from the case itself; it wasn't just the sound of the drive spinning up or being accessed. To be honest this is not something I couldn't have lived with if I had to, but what killed it for me, as I hinted at in the review title, was the issue of heat dissipation, or should I say the LACK of heat dissipation!

I installed the drive, started transferring some data, then left for a couple of hours to run some errands. When I got back I checked on the progress of the transfer, and touched the case out of interest to see how "warm" it was; to my surprise the case wasn't warm, it was hot, VERY hot! I decided to put the drive into one of the G-Tech cases, and that's when I got a second, even nastier surpise... after opening the case I found the drive itself was actually too hot to handle!!! :(

After running the drive for 4-5 hours inside the G-Tech case, the case itself was no warmer to the touch than when I'd run the 1TB drive it came with, then just out of interest I put the 1TB drive into the Macally case and ran it for a few hours; while it was warmer than the G-Tech, it wasn't worryingly so.

This is one of the few instances where I've taken advantage of Amazon's fantastic Returns Service, and it looks as if I'm going to have to spring for one of the ruinously expensive G-Tech's ! LOL!

All in all I'd say the Macally is a terrific case for the price, but if you're looking to put a 7200rpm 2TB drive in it you might want to think twice.

Helpful

Peter V. Giansante

Great for a backup drive enclosure

Reviewed in the United States on October 11, 2011

Verified Purchase

The Macally G-S350SUA enclosure is great for backups or other non-continuous operation. It's a sturdy, reliable, versatile unit, and a great value; however, there are some caveats that apply to using this enclosure with high-capacity drives and high-load, continuous operation.

The unit comes with USB and FireWire cables. I doesn't include an eSATA cable, but that's not a deal killer. The back panel contains a power supply connector, a USB B-Type female connector, an eSATA female connector, and TWO FireWire 400 (IEE1394A) female connectors, which enables daisy-chaining of other FireWire devices. The unit also includes a cradle for holding the enclosure upright, as well as two screw-on non-skid feet for mounting the unit in a more permanent vertical configuration.

I especially like the power switch conveniently located on the front panel. The blue power indicator light behind the front panel also doubles as a drive activity indicator by pulsing slightly during read/write operations. The combination of USB, FireWire, and eSATA gives the enclosure great connectivity options. The higher transfer rates provided by FireWire and eSATA even make the drive useful in a pinch as an external drive for recording audio and video.

I use the Macally G-S350SUA exclusively for backups, and it's a great enclosure in that application. However, I have to qualify my recommendation if you're going to use the enclosure for a drive in continuous operation. And I would be especially careful about using it as an enclosure for a drive containing a boot volume (the drive you use to start your computer).

There are two reasons for the aforementioned caveat -- especially if the drive is a full height (3.5") drive of 1TB or higher capacity. First, the power supply is a little wall wart. My experience with those units is that they're not durable under continuous high-load use. Many large capacity drives (1TB or higher) uses a lot of current, which is where the wall warts are generally the most deficient. High current means high heat, and placing that kind of load on a wall wart continuously is a prescription for failure. The Macally G-S350SUA's power supply has no problem with drives of 500GB capacity or less, and it can even handle a large drive for a backup operation, wherein you power up the unit, run the backup, and then power it down; but I can't vouch for its ability to run a large drive continuously. That's of special concern if the drive is a boot drive. A power supply failure on the boot drive while the computer is in use would not be a good thing.

The second caveat with this enclosure concerns heat dissipation. The fact that it's all metal (except for the back panel, which is plastic) is a definite plus for cooling, but be forewarned: THIS ENCLOSURE HAS NO FAN. That's usually touted as a "feature", because fans make noise. But heat kills hard drives. A little fan noise is a fair exchange for the longer life provided by cooler operation.

As passive (no-fan) designs go, this unit is one of the best. If you're using a thinner drive (not full height) with fewer platters, the increased airspace inside the enclosure will provide better air circulation, and therefore better heat dissipation. In that case, I might trust this enclosure for use with a lower capacity drive in continuous operation, provided it were in a location with good air circulation. But with a full height drive that sees heavy usage, I wouldn't use this enclosure without an external fan or some other means of ensuring cooler operation.

I have purchased three of these enclosures for backup drives. They're excellent for that purpose, and my five-star rating applies specifically to that usage, for which I can give this enclosure my highest recommendation. It's a good enclosure for other purposes, subject to the caveats mentioned above.

3 people found this helpful

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Copter Pilot

Chronic oversleeper

Reviewed in the United States on December 31, 2009

Verified Purchase

Looks good, works well... until it goes to sleep, and then it will refuse to wake up. It locks up the entire computer (Mac Mini) until I manually power off/power on the drive unit. This happens every day and makes the drive virtually unusable. I tried adjusting the power saving feature to both extremes to no effect. The discussion boards explain the power supply as the problem, particularly when powering the larger (1 TB or greater) drives and that is indeed what I'm using. Hopefully tech support will send me a higher capacity power supply but even if they do, this type of problem should never have been an issue to begin with.

Update: Macally sent me an upgraded power supply. The problem has lessened, but still happens about once every 3 days (instead of everyday). I gave up on it. But I do give Macally some credit for sending the power supply; too bad it was not enough.

9 people found this helpful

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Mido

Nice enclosure, but fails to spin up sometimes

Reviewed in the United States on June 30, 2009

Verified Purchase

I have had 2 of these enclosures for about 2 months. Both enclose 1.5TB caviar green drives, used for mirror RAID. After being idle for a while (e.g., overnight), sometimes one will not spin up, which will break my raid and hang the system. This has happened four times already, each time causing my raid to be rebuilding for 2 days. -- See also a negative review about power supplies in this thread. If you just want an occasional external drive, this enclosure might be great, but it is not reliable enough for ongoing use. Other review: http://www.amazon.com/review/R2RH8HQEWT5LIV/

15 people found this helpful

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Matthew Leo

Nice looking enclosure, does the job.

Reviewed in the United States on June 22, 2008

Verified Purchase

Nice looking enclosure, that can laid flat or stood on the end with the enclosed stand (not pictured). It also has strips of plastic that screw into the U shaped projections on the chassis -- I'm not sure what they're for (maybe I should read the manual), but they don't seem necessary if you are using the stand. Installing the drive is a snap; it takes longer to get this thing out of the shipping box than it does to put the drive in.

Annoyingly bright blue LEDs seem to be common on these kinds of enclosures, and although this too has a blue LED that is brighter than it needs to be, it is recessed behind the button and thus not blinding as with many external enclosures. The LED is not uncomfortably bright in a lit room, but it may be brighter than you want in a dark room. It's fine in an office, for example, but you wouldn't want to use it in the same room as your home entertainment system. It's too bad because it is otherwise an attractive enclosure.

I bought this to do database work on my laptop. Such work is very slow on a 2.5" notebook drive. I've got a Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD6400AAKS (640GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache) in it, which is decent but not particularly high end. In this enclosure, with either firewire or USB 2.0, that disk is just a tad faster than the built in notebook drive, maybe 15-20%. With an ExpressCard eSata adapter, it's dramatically faster, about 3x as fast as the notebook drive. Your results will vary with your drive and chipset.

My enclosure/drive combination does fine on Firewire and USB 2.0. I haven't seen any dramatic difference between Firewire and USB 2.0 -- Firewire might get the edge, but it's not enough to worry about. If you are worried about speed, then you should definitely add eSata to your system provided you have a desktop or a notebook with an ExpressCard slot.

Naturally, this isn't something you can take on the plane with you, but if you use your laptop as a desktop replacement, this can be quite useful when you've got AC power to plug into and need a fast drive. Unlike many 2.5" enclosures, you must power this thing off the included power brick, which is particularly clunky, even as such things go. It would be terrific if you could power this of a USB Y cable, but that's probably not practical given the power some full size drives require vs. how much juice you can draw off a USB port.

I've used this on Linux and Windows laptops, as well as a Mac Mini. It works fine in Linux under USB 2.0 or eSata. Firewire under Linux seems a bit flaky unless the drive has already been formatted -- although I've had the same problem with other 1394 enclosures. I've only done USB 2.0 under Windows (fine), and on a Mac Mini I've used both USB 2.0 and Firewire, both performed flawlessly. There's no option for adding eSata to the Mini, so I can't say about eSata on MacOS, but I'd guess if you have a supported card you'd probably be fine.

42 people found this helpful

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VLopez

Very nice, easy to install, quiet and very efficient

Reviewed in the United States on August 19, 2011

Verified Purchase

After being disappointed with a prior purchase (totally different style and manufacturer) that did not power on after I installed my 2TB hard drive in it, I spent a couple of weeks researching FireWire enclosures. I arrived at this one and ordered it.
Installation was a breeze. No internal cable necessary as the connector is perfectly positioned to simply push the hard drive onto it.
After putting the finishing cosmetic and functional touches on the outside, I made all the power and data connections to my computer and it powered on with a blue glow in front.
It works seamlessly with TimeMachine.
It is very quiet and aside from the Blue Power Light on the front, you hardly know it's there.
When Time Machine performs the hourly back up, I hear the unit working, but it's hardly a distraction. If anything, it is very reassuring to know my data is being stored safely and perfectly, just as I wanted it to be.
I am very happy with this unit.

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Personne

Works well, but a few missed opportunities

Reviewed in the United States on July 19, 2010

Verified Purchase

If you own a Mac Pro as I do, it's pretty obvious who this enclosure is intended for. It's a "Mini-Me" that emulates the aluminum box look of the Pro. It doesn't quite reach the mechanical elegance of the Mac, where a drive can be installed without touching a screwdriver. A screwdriver is indeed required here, but the task of installing a drive is still trivial. Although it would be nice to simply stand the enclosure on its edge, it's a little inclined to tip over. A couple of sets of feet are included, and it's probably a good idea to use them. The whole thing is slightly larger than most similar enclosures: not enough to be a problem, but enough to notice when they're side-by-side.

In my first use of this enclosure, I encountered a bit of strangeness. I installed a 1TB drive which had been formatted in some proprietary format (I'd removed it from another piece of hardware). I first connected to my Mac using Firewire, but the drive didn't appear. Using the "About This Mac" utility, I took a look at Firewire, and the Mac didn't know what sort of device was connected. I then connected by USB and the Mac immediately saw the drive and offered to format it. I formatted the drive and dismounted it. Connecting again by Firewire, the Mac immediately saw the drive and proceeded with no difficulty. This may be a peculiarity of the drive or of OSX--I don't know which. I suppose the lesson is to try all the interfaces if there's an initial problem with one.

The first thing I do with any new drive is to run a surface scan to test the drive's integrity. Although drives these days are very good, I always want to feel confident before committing my data. This is also a good test of an enclosure. It tests the electronics, the power supply and the heat dispersion. With a 1TB drive and Firewire 400, this is a 7.5 hour test...

..This test and subsequent tests passed without difficulty, so I've placed the enclosure in service. I was able to test both USB and Firewire. eSATA will have to wait.

At a price of around $40, this is a fairly pricy enclosure. In this day and age, there's really no reason why FW 800 couldn't replace FW 400. In addition, there's no multicolor LED to indicate disk access. There's only a blue power LED which flickers ever so slightly. These are shortcomings and I hope Macally fixes them in future products. On the plus side, it has all three major interfaces, so it should be future-proof (at least for the near future). My previous experiences with Macally have been good, so I hope that streak continues.

2 people found this helpful

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Jean-Etienne LaVallee

Sexy-looking, Easy to Assemble and Future Compatible

Reviewed in the United States on July 4, 2012

Verified Purchase

Just got this to add a 2TB drive to my growing media center computer (a mid-2007 iMac already decked out with a 1TB WD MyBook FW/USB2.0 drive, we use Plex Media Server and a Roku with the Plex Channel to view content on our TV/Stereo and AirVideo and iTunes remote streaming to Airport Expresses to stream to our iOS devices and speakers around the house).

I coupled this with a Western Digital 2TB Green SATA 7200 RPM drive which appears to have great out-of-the-box performance for the price-point.

Pros:
1) Assembly took all of about 15 minutes and the instructions are well detailed and include great illustrations.
2) All-aluminum enclosure with good front-to-back ventilation appears to do a great job of dissipating the drive heat when in the vertical orientation (not so sure how this works in the horizontal orientation)
3) Future-proof: Besides the USB 2.0 and FW400, it's eSATA compatible, but doesn't include an eSATA cable.
4) Price: Yes, there are cheaper models out there, but for the quality of the materials, included cables and generally "sexy" aesthetics, I'm more than happy to pay the extra $15.

Cons:
1) The two little screw-on "feet" for stablizing the drive when it's in the vertical "v-stand" couldn't be attached because the powder-coating on the drive casing had filled in the screw threads (really, just brutal... the one thing that makes the case so attractive also makes full-assembly impossible). I was able to tap it out using a small screw-hole tap, but really, how many people have an english/metric tap set just laying around?
2) No FW800, I'm assuming this is an accomodation for the eSATA connection, but on newer macs which only support FW800 ports (requiring a FW800-to-FW400 cable) this is a bit of a pain in the butt both from a cable selection standpoint and from a speed standpoint.

If you want a nice enclosure, that's quiet, heat-friendly, future-compatible, and cheaper than the thunderbolt options currently trickling into the market, you can't beat this one.

-1 Star for the powdercoating fubar and lack of FW800 ports otherwise highly recommended.

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