I have really had good luck with this enclosure. It is the only one I have found that consistently burns up to 16x (Firewire) and over 12x (USB2) with all of my burners. Not sure on the chipset as it is under the board non visable.

Same results here with 2 Bytecc boxes. They're ugly though, and noisy fans. They use the Oxford firewire chip and Ali USB. (I think)

BTW, you might be able to see your chipsets in the Windows "Unplug Hardware" dialogue.

Mine is actually made pretty well for 42$ and has cool side lights. I do not think it is a ali usb2 though.

My GSA-5163D environment:

1. PC#1: 845GV, ICH4, ICH4's USB 2.0, GSA-5163D connected to one of the USB 2.0 ports in the backpanel side of the Gigabyte motherboard. 12x OK, 16x writing runs at 14x max.

2. PC#2: SiS 655 Gigabyte, 2.4B P4, IEEE 1394a controller somewhere on the motherboard, GSA-5163D connected to one of the IEEE 1394a ports. 16x OK. 28MB/s burst rate.

My burst on the enclosure above was around 21 mbs USB2, and 26mbs for Firewire. But burst doesn't really tell you more than it may be able to reach that speed for a second. It the sustained transfer rate that is critical.

I have a older ADS oxford chipset enclosure and it shows burst of 24mbs using usb2 but trying to write above 8x it fails, it is pretty much useless other than 8x.

The reason for the ADS failure is a issue with external enclosures and how they handle the ATAPI interface(the same issues are prevelent with certain PCI IDE controllers), my ADS even with the newer oxford chipset uses multiword2 dma mode on many of my writers instead of UDMA, pretty much limiting the speed. So sometimes it is a combination of a good chipset and a good atapi interface that handles udma modes well with ATAPI devices.

Also the chipset and the interface on the PC side.

true but I have proved that in my case that wasn't a issue.

I think a good external enclosure compatability thread would be nice. ie external enclosure model/dvd writer/firmware/write speeds achieved. That way atleast people would know that the enclosue can handle the speed and if they can not get it to write that fast then the issue is on the pc end.

I am going to use some cheap USB2 to IDE thing, it works fine burning with my CD burner at 52x, will it work ok at 16x with NEC 3500A?

Ben

I doubt it. If you read some of the posts about external enclosures, not that many are able to burn DVD´s faster then at 8 or 12x speed.

The best thing is, you open your enclosure and check the USB2 chip.
From what I have seen only NEC and Prolific PL-3507 chipset equiped enclosures are in the best scenario, able to burn at 16x.

BTW, 52x CD burnspeed is ~7.8Mb/s... 16x DVD burnspeed is approx. 22Mb/s

Ok, at the moment I have 3 internal drives and 1 on a USB, I also have a spare ide2usb cable, so I guess I could put the 3500A internal and the 8x Lite-On on the USB.

I take it it wont actually stop me burning at 16x, it will result in buffer underun or other errors if I try to.

But I thought all USB2.0 products where 480 Mbps.

I am using THIS ide2usb.

Ben theory is one thing, real world most of the time something complete different...
Yeah, the total speed on USB2 bus can be as high as 40Mb/s.

BTW, here you have a simple bits/bytes calculator.

Do not know anything about your USB/IDE converter, so if you can open it and check do so, otherwise there are tools to measure transfer speed. Nero CD/DVD Speed is one tool.

What do you mean open it up?

Jamos, do you have any problems with cooling your drive in the SPEEZE enclosure? From what I see, there isn't a fan onboard. I was thinking of getting that enclosure, along with a LiteOn 1633S (as a second drive). Wanted to make sure there wouldn't be any problems.

Thread closed in an attempt to consolidate and organize all the external enclosure threads. Please make any new posts in this new thread, where you can also read more about this consolidation. Please feel free to PM me if you have any questions or concerns about this closure/consolidation. Thank you for your understanding in this matter.