True to the Adaptec name, the ACS-300 runs fast and reliable. It was super simple to setup and transfers data acceptably fast over USB2. When you've got a ton of data you need to move, there's an eSATA port right on back - don't even have to remove the drive to run at 3gbps.
My only complaint: the chassis has no ventilation. No fans, no air vents, nothing. I've had quite a few MAXTOR drives die from overheating in the past (and have since given up on Maxtor altogether because of it) so I'm a little worried. It's advertised that the aluminum case aids in heat dissipation. =\ ...Right... is that a feature or just an accident? Sure the aluminum case warms up, but nowhere NEAR as hot as the drive inside. But, it's been working fine for a while now so hopefully this won't be a problem.
Still, I wouldn't throw a Maxtor drive in there. ;)
UPDATE:
it's now April of 2008 - a year and a half later -- and the enclosure died. It powers up but does not show up as a drive in windows. I've kept a small fan blowing on it 24/7 for the entire year and a half (as I'm paranoid about burning up the drive inside) and it's never ever gotten hot. Why it died? I couldn't tell ya, but it has. Fortunately the Hard Drive inside is fine. Just the enclosure died. Time to move on. 3.5"ESATA/USB Enclosure Kit
I'm a minority when it comes to using these enclosures for their actual purposes. I fix computers for a living and often times have to do data backups for clients. These enclosures, both this one and the IDE version are life savers. Instead of having to turn off my machine and hook up the hard drive that way I can easily put it into the enclosure, turn the enclosure on and be on my way with the data transfer.
This one is no slouch. I've used this enclosure with 2.5" SATA drives as well as the normal 3.5" SATA drives. I've had no problems whatsoever. I haven't encountered a hiccup yet. My only gripe is the width of the enclosure. Often times the hard drives I remove have screws on the sides of them so that they can easily go back into place in their respective cases (think Compaq computer hard drives). I have to remove all screws in order for the drive to actually fit inside the enclosure so that it can actually connect to the SATA connectors. But besides that, this thing is top notch.
This enclosure is great except that it does not have any automatic power shutoff and it's passive cooling is in my opinion not enough. I have a 500 GB WD Caviar drive in there running all the time, probably wasting a lot of energy because when my computer goes into standby mode to save power, this drive for some reason continues to run, so it is always fairly warm. I have to physically turn it off at the switch to save power. Maybe I am missing something, but I guess I thought it would be smarter than that. Other than that, it is lightning fast, and it does my full backups (>300 GB) much, much faster than USB hard drive enclosures. As far as speed goes, this is a great model. If I could do it over, I would buy an enclosure with active cooling.'
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