What high quality, reasonably priced external hard drive firewire enclosures do others suggest for a Western Digital or Maxtor hard drive?

Does it make any difference in the overall performance of the hard drive?

a friend of mine bought one of these and has had great luck with it:
http://www.coolmaxusa.com/product/pd...b_list_02.html
Newegg has them for about $60
He has not complained about the overall speed, so it must not be too much of an issue. He is using a WD 80 SE drive.

That CoolMax enclosure seems perfect. A couple questions, if I may:

- does the technology in these enclosures change rapidly (chip set?)?
- does the pricing on these enclosures tend to drop with time or is it rather stable?
- is the cooling fan necessary (combo model contains; firewire doesn't)?
- is formatting the hard drive easy? Does the kit contain everything necessary for this?
- do you think the Western Digital Special Edition (i.e. 8 mb cache instead of 2 mb cache) IDE hard drives would be drastically limited by the Firewire or USB 2.0 connection?

One more question:

- Is there any functional difference between the 309 and 337 series? One reviewer mentioned Genesys GL7HW adaptor (vs. Oxford 911 converter?)

- does the technology in these enclosures change rapidly (chip set?)? don't know

- does the pricing on these enclosures tend to drop with time or is it rather stable? don't know

- is the cooling fan necessary (combo model contains; firewire doesn't)? can't hurt. the alum case ones tend to run cooler than the plastic though.

- is formatting the hard drive easy? Does the kit contain everything necessary for this? don't know. I would think Windows would see the drive as removable, and you could simply format it in Windows. If not format the drive connected to an IDE cable first.

- do you think the Western Digital Special Edition (i.e. 8 mb cache instead of 2 mb cache) IDE hard drives would be drastically limited by the Firewire or USB 2.0 connection? don't know. My friend is running the SE 80 gig and has not complained about transfer speed. I wouldn't think you would benefit from the SE drive, but they are very reliable. I have been running 3 80 SE's in a RAID0 array for over 1 1/2 for video capture and they have survived the wear and tear.

Is there any functional difference between the 309 and 337 series? One reviewer mentioned Genesys GL7HW adaptor (vs. Oxford 911 converter?) It looks like the 309 is the newer version and can handle the larger HD's

I have been using Bytecc external enclosures, one for my Maxtor hard drive and one for my Lite On DVD-ROM drive, they work perfectly. You can find them at Dealsonic.com. They have the lastest chipset and will allow you to put in a hard drive greater than 137GB.

I currently have a Maxtor 120GB 8MB cache in the external enclosure hooked up via firewire, it also has USB 2.0. Transfer rate is super fast and no problems whatso ever. Altough I am running out of room and I just purchased a dual firewire enclosure planning on putting in 2 Maxtor 160 GB drive in it. If you are interested in buying my Maxtor 120GB in the external case, please email me at sam_suen@csaa.com

SE drives have a 3-year warranty as opposed to 1. The speed increase is supposed to be noticable (some say an 8mb 5400 is faster than a 2Mb 7200, but it depends on application I would think). Also the 8Mb cache cuts down on the drive wear as it's hunting less.