Replacement external drive - should I get a new enclosure?

About 10 days ago when I ran Hard Disk Sentinel on my system it showed one of my external drives as only 19% healthy, with an expected remaining lifetime of 56 days.

As the drive, a 2TB WD Black 3.5", was bought in November 2013 and had a 5-year warranty I got the receipt and packaging, removed the drive from the enclosure, and took it to the supplying retailer. They called up the transaction on their system and said we'd need to contact WD. So while in the shop we logged in to my WD account that I'd created some years ago, noted the drive was registered, so input the faults. RMA accepted so posted it back to WD. A replacement drive has now been shipped.

As the enclosure is also nearly 5 years old, should I put the new drive in the old enclosure, or buy a new enclosure?

Any recommendations for a decent 3.5" enclosure, so many seem to be built very sloppily?

As the old one is USB 2 I'd also take the opportunity and buy a USB 3 enclosure.

Thoughts appreciated.

Your last statement "As the old one is USB 2 I'd also take the opportunity and buy a USB 3 enclosure". That should answer your question. Using USB 2 the bottle neck is the interface, using USB 3.0 the bottle neck will be the drive. WD black drives are best and fastest spinners you can buy (except for some 10k rpm drives). As long as your system supports USB 3.0, that's what I would do. .

Or even better would be one that supports eSATA much more stable than USB and a direct connection to your SATA controller. I have had very good luck with Fantom Ext drives I don't know if they sell enclosures only or not. if they do they are top of the line. If you computer support eSATA its well worth a couple of extra dollars.

Technology has advanced so much in the past few years with storage I would go for a new modern case. And at 5 years the chipset in that external could go at any time.

Clintlgm said:

Or even better would be one that supports eSATA much more stable than USB and a direct connection to your SATA controller. I have had very good luck with Fantom Ext drives I don't know if they sell enclosures only or not. if they do they are top of the line. If you computer support eSATA its well worth a couple of extra dollars.

Technology has advanced so much in the past few years with storage I would go for a new modern case. And at 5 years the chipset in that external could go at any time.

Took a look at Fantom, but no where do they state who's physical drives they use ? Do you know by any chance ? I always prefer WD black drives. Over the last 10 years they have been extremely reliable. I have several units that are what I call bi-sexual (Both USB 3.0 and Esata). Esata is more reliable than USB 3.0, but it is a bit slower, but not by much.


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In the end I bought a USB 3 version of the same brand as I've used for nearly 5 years, Dynamode.

The replacement drive arrived today and has been installed and is up and running ok.

Very pleased with the service from WD.

[QUOTE=storageman;1418057]Took a look at Fantom, but no where do they state who's physical drives they The use ? Do you know by any chance ? I always prefer WD black drives. Over the last 10 years they have been extremely reliable. I have several units that are what I call bi-sexual (Both USB 3.0 and Esata). Esata is more reliable than USB 3.0, but it is a bit slower, but not by much.

The last few I have purchased their high end 7200 with eSATA and USB 3.0 have had WD Blacks with warranty going through Fantom although I have yet to have one fail. I have 2 backup drive running UsB 3.0 just testing what i notice different is that Utilities like HD Tune can't read the drives through USB 3.0 but the eSATA do so its easier to monitor the SMART for failing drives. I have 3 2TB on my 3 Direct TV DVR I just changed them out after 6 years with these new one and what a difference 7200 RPM makes they old ones were IBM Hitachi those were low-end units, I expect these high-end one will last longer. DVR really work a hard drive as all the Directv stream goes through the hard drive so there running nearly 18-7