Rosewill RX35-AT-SC BLK Full Aluminum Cover, Metal Tray 3.5" Black USB2.0 & eSATA External Enclosure

Pros: Solid case construction and vertical stand

Cons: - Hitachi 1TB drive (the one I purchased it for) was extremely slow in the enclosure. It turned out it was running at SATA-150 speed.
- Thankfully I also had a Seagate 500GB drive and it work fine at SATA-300 as supposed to. So I found *some* use for the case. I really needed 1 TB drive though.
- Screws that hold the I/O assembly (the ones that attaches on the drive itself before sliding it into the case) were too big - the drive would not slide in. Thankfully I had spare screws with smaller heads. Absolutely unacceptable - what if I didn't have extra screws laying around?
- Inactivity shut-off is very annoying. The drive powers down after about 5 min of inactivity. This is ridiculous, at least make it a reasonable timeout like 15 min (and ideally give me a way to disable this "feature"

Other Thoughts: Still looking for an enclosure that would work with Hitachi 1TB drive. It will definitely will not be a Rosewill.

Pros: For the money, this is an excellent Product, hope they never stop making it or make any changes to it. Doesn't need upgrades, good just as it is.

Cons: Nada

Other Thoughts: Newegg, Keep up the good work, like what you have done with shipping options.

Pros: Product works as described.

Cons: None

Pros: cheap, thin profile, minimal branding/stickers on case

Cons: worked with light use, monthly backup to 2TB drive, but then corrupted my drive. Replaced with alternate drive, new drive corrupted again.

Other Thoughts: You get what you pay for...

Now it's out of warranty, so not worth doing anything else about than trashing it.

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Valued Customer,
We do apologize for this unexpected inconvenience with our product.Please kindly contact Rosewill support team either via phone at 800-575-9885 or email at rma@rosewill.com so we may assist you.We are eager to assist you in any possible way. We look forward to hearing from you soon.

Thank you
Rosewill Customer Care

Pros: Up to 2.0 TB (eSATA)

Cons: Up to 2.0 TB (eSATA)

Pros: eSATA, 1.5TB, external power, works great.

Cons: Doesn't seem to send SMART info - or at least I can't get it with SpeedFan. Haven't tried other programs.

Other Thoughts: After a catastrophic computer failure caused by a failed power supply (which fried HDDs, MB, CPU, video card) I got serious about having a backup. I put a 1.5TB WD drive in this enclosure. Once a month I clone my HD to it, and every night run an automatic incremental backup. I like that it has its own power supply, so a power spike in the computer won't damage the backup drive. And when a nearby fire required an evacuation, we just grabbed the enclosure with the backup HD, knowing that everything on the computer is in it.

Pros: The case is inexpensive and looks good. It also accepts USB and eSata.

Cons: After wrestling with two units I have for a long time, I discovered something really annoying: There are at least *two* versions of this enclosure (I happen to have one of each).

The first version (identified by a v1.2 on the circuit board) will leave your HD indefinitely on, which for me is a huge plus. You can turn off your hard drive from your computer (hdparm on Linux) and everything works as it should. I'd give this model four stars, docking one for the poor heat dissipation.

The second model (without a version number in the circuit board, purchased more recently) behaves in a completely different way: It will turn your HD off after seven minutes of "inactivity". The problem is that when your computer queries the HD to know if it's OFF, the enclosure will wake up the HD just to say it's alive. It takes a long time, fills up your log files with error messages and causes all sorts on problems. On top of that, any access to the drive will wake it up -- on my system, something pokes the drive every 30 minutes. With the older version of the enclosure, whatever does this detects the drive is sleeping and nothing happens. With this second version, the drive "awakes" twice an hour. My start/stop count for this drive already shows 1083 restarts. :( I'd give this second version zero stars if I could.

Other Thoughts: It's a real problem when a product is sold with multiple versions and completely different behaviors. I simply cannot use the second enclosure, and feel completely cheated by Newegg/Rosewill on this.

Pros: - Drive goes into sleep mode when not in use (perfect for DVR setup)
- Vertical stand is nifty
- Runs fairly cool on the drive I have installed
- CHEAP

Cons: - Blue Activity LED (bad for HT setups. I want to to be dark!)
- Takes a while to wake up from sleep mode
- Tight fit
- No Ventilation
- 'Green'/5200RPM low power hard drives need only apply.
- Difficult/near impossible to remove drive from enclosure once set
- Screws for drive rail mount should be completely flat and flush (not a wedging 'V' type screw)

Other Thoughts: Word of caution - Before inserting the drive into the enclosure, TEST IT! Cause this bad boy aint coming out again. Also dont screw the screws so tight that the rails 'bow' away from the drive. Makes mounting it easier.

Overall though I am happy with the enclosure. Just put the drive together, powered it on and plugged it into the DVR. Picked it up and it formatted straight away.

For the annoying Blue LED, just put a piece of tape over the indicator or turn the front of it away from you so its less annoying.

Pros: Nothing

Cons: I had this thing for a not even a day, and it already is giving me issues. First, my HTPC has an esata port, it's setup to be hot swap compatible, this thing made it freeze up. Restarted, it worked. HTPC went into standby, drive decides to turn itself off. I wake up the htpc, the drive decides it doesn't want to show up any more. I power cycle the drive, still doesn't work. I give up.

Other Thoughts: Maybe if it was a worthwhile esata controller, it might be worth it, I should have spent my $15 on something else.

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Valued Customer,

Please check your drive on another PC if problem persist contact our Rosewill support team either at 800-575-9885 or Email us at techsupport@rosewill.com so that we may further assist you.

Thank you

Rosewill Customer Care

Pros: -Easy to install the drive
-No problems with 74GB Raptor, 300GB, 1TB or 2TB drives
-Drives are recognized on everything I've tried them with - Win7 32bit and 64 bit laptops, desktops, Debian boxes, streaming media players, my router, my DVD player- haven't found anything that doesn't recognize it
-No drivers to install
-Comes with USB and eSATA cables, stand, everything you need - as always Rosewill doesn't skimp on the accessories
-Attractive Design - these are sleek looking black enclosures with a blue LED

Cons: -No fan and very limited ventilation, can cause an issue depending on how you are going to use it
-As it has little ventilation and no fan, if you use for intensive always-on tasks, overheating can become an issue

Other Thoughts: I bought several of these - 1 to house an old 300GB Seagate drive, 1 to house a semi-old 1 TB Western Digital drive, and one to house an old 74GB WD Raptor. Generally, performance has been appropriate. And as always, Rosewill's products exceed expectations - you get more value for your dollar than most brands - and great customer service.

The product is what it is - a SATA to USB 2.0/eSATA enclosure with no fan. It does what it's meant to, showing up immediately in Windows and working flawlessly in that purpose. HOWEVER, due to the fact that there is no fan and no ventilation, depending on the drive you install, it MAY overheat and shutdown. I had this happen when I tried using it with a high-demand 2TB Western Digital green drive. The drive was holding 1.5 TB of media and is connected to a WDTV Live streaming media player. When used in this capacity, playing a movie, so the drive was spinning non-stop and data transfer was constant, after about 30 minutes the drive overheated and shutdown. Feeling the enclosure, it was hot (although not burning) to the touch. If I power-cycled the enclosure, the drive would work again, but it would shut down again after several minutes from the heat.

Again, no fan AND no ventilation - this is a heat-box depending on how you use it, There are absolutely no vents on the housing, which is aluminum so it absorbs heat - only outlet for heat is through the aluminum shedding it to the environment and the small openings around the USB/eSATA ports.

I'm only docking 1 egg from this heat issue because an external enclosure with no fan isn't really designed for an always-on constant transfer scenario. It's designed to either be a file repository from which you fetch files to work on periodically (i.e. store all your documents), or as a backup device (IMHO). In this capacity, it works fine. It also works in less intensive always-on scenarios - with a 300GB drive installed, a Sony media player has had no problem playing movies from it - it got warm, but never turned off and has not damaged the drive in over a month. I'm sure it helps that the smaller drive requires less movement in the drive to read data.

In short, this is a great basic enclosure for backing up data or light-load always-on use.

If you need an enclosure to support a high-load always-on scenario, pick one with a fan - I suggest the Rosewill RX355 or RX358, or if you want USB 3.0, the Mediasonic ProBox K32-SU3. I am using the Mediasonic as I wanted a USB 3.0 enclosure for a 2TB drive to connect to an HTPC that only used passive ventilation to control noise.

So, in short: great product for light to medium-intensity use, especially with drives that produce less heat (smaller and/or better brands). Upgrade to one with a fan or ventilation slots for high-intensity uses. I'm running a 300gb drive as an always-on, low-demand media server, and a 1TB drive for general use (moving data around, backing up, etc...