Yeah, I found that page, too.

My next project will be to locate the Windows OS file that contains the resource data for that dialog, and hack it out of the file so that it can't put it up. Hmph.

The fan is significantly louder than the "Silent" that it claims to be. In fact, it's decidedly loud in my opinion. Also, the design of the air ducting seems to not really allow a large amount of actual air flow around the drive. Although there is some airflow.

I have no way of measuring the runtime temperature of the drive (S.M.A.R.T. utilities only work on directly-connected IDE drives as far as I know), so I have no idea how truly effective the fan is.

Because the drive is only meant to be turned on when I'm actively backing up files, these are not issues for me. I just want it to get a little bit of cooling during the backup, then I shut it down.

I did end up finally ordering this one from NewEgg. It seems to be the only one they sell capable of bus power off either USB or Firewire. The USB cable it includes has two plugs on one end (one for extra power), then a single USB mini plug on the other that goes into the device. Firewire is of course just the standard 6 pin (that my Dell brick can't be nice enough to include even with 4 usb ports).

The enclosure isn't all that impressive, but it is functional. I just need to remember to plug in the USB cables to the computer first, as the drive will try to power off one USB plug.

I have an external enclosure question and thought I'd just bring up this thread.

Is it possible to put one of these in a standard USB2 or firewire enclosure? Would the data transfer rate be sufficient for the faster burn speeds? Would it even communicate properly? I've never used external enclosures before, and I'm only looking into getting one because my PC is now deep under my desk, and it's quite a strech to hit the eject button and put discs in.

Any thoughts?

Yup, should be fine. You can get plenty of (like) drives already mounted in enclosures.

Bruno

Check that the bridge chip in the enclosure will work with non HD devices however. Some of the older ones didn't work properly with ATAPI devices and you'd get "interesting" problems.