Rosewill RX-358 U3C SLV Aluminum/Plastic 3.5-Inch Silver USB3.0 & eSATA External Enclosure

$36.99 with prime shipping at time of purchase.This is a good case for a single drive. Installation of a drive is easy(a few minutes if that), and since it is metallic it dissipates heat away from the drive effectively(which is VERY VERY important to the longevity of any drive used so stop settling with plastic cases people!), and also comes with a fan that can be turned on and off. So far this is a good case for a single drive, but if you will at some point move into a simple raid setup(0 or 1) or JBOB, and have the cash you should invest in at least a 2bay enclosure to be able to have some data security(RAID 1 protects against hardware failure of one drive) or increased performance(RAID 0 stripes data across drives to increase performance but decreases reliability) with another drive.I have not used the eSata funtionality nor fully taken advantage of usb 3.0(as the PC I use this enclosure with only has USB 2.0) so I can not comment. If I have a problem in the furture I will adjust this review accordingly.Also keep in mind the blue light is very bright and can be distracting in a dark room. This can be solved with a little tape so it isnt a problem really, but it should be a standard feature to be able to turn lights such as this off. The light on the right(I believe off the top of my head) is the HDD activity light, which can be covered also but I would keep part of it visible at least so you can tell if the drive is being accessed at glance.This is NOT designed to protect your drive from the raw kinetic force of an impact. If you need something like that you would need to mod this case with bumpers, get an case for this when you travel, or just be really really careful with your HDD(which you should always be anyway)

I bought two of these for my 1 TB backup disks (1 Seagate, 1 WD) to replace 2 Sans Digital fanless cases in which the disks get rather hot, and one of which became unreliable (it was the enclosure or its cabling or connectors, not the disk that failed - proven by swapping the disks). Those had the Oxford OXUF934 chip in them and this Rosewill case has a newer ASmedia 1051 + 1453 chipset (per the specs). I primarily use the eSATA interface, but the USB interface also seems to work for me in 2.0 mode. I have not tested it in a USB 3.0 port.With Ubuntu 12.04 and eSATA this will hot-plug just fine. It doesn't automount for me but that is probably just my configuration. I am also able to spin the disk down on command (hdparm -y) and spin it back up easily. It does automount with USB for me on a machine with a more generic configuration.SMART parameters are accessible via the chipset in this enclosure (via eSATA anyway). They were not available with the Oxford chipset as best I could tell. Tested with smartctl and my Seagate ST31000340AS (Barracuda 7200.11). Yes, this is a 4+ year old drive.The blue LEDs are obnoxiously bright, but it is easy to unplug them. I keep the enclosure on its side on an old rubbery mouse pad so the fan is open to the air. You can't turn the fan down unless you add some standoffs or construct a stand of some sort so the fan can get some air. I suppose you could operate it with the fan turned up, but then the drive is upside down. That may be fine, but I'm not personally too comfortable with it. The fan sucks air in and vents out the front mostly but there are small vent holes in the back too so I think the drive electronics and enclosure board will get some air flow. The fan is pretty quiet (I don't hear it).When operating, the case seems to stay cooler then the fanless Sans Digital case, so qualitatively I think it helps. SMART is telling me the temperature is 36C, which is fine.Pros:Fan. eSATA+USB3.0. Hot-plug works. SMART parameters/tests work.Cons:The fan blows mostly on the back part of the drive, near the spindle where its electronics are not and mostly vents out in that direction also, so I don't think the drive electronics are getting much airflow.No feet or stand or standoffs.excessively bright blue LEDs.

Very dissappointed with the QC and customer service of these units. I bought one black and one silver. Added one 3TB drive to each enclosure. The black one worked great, but the silver one made a loud grinding noise when the fan was spinning. I requested and received an RMA, but I have to pay for return shipping. Not ideal. I bought a new silver enclosure the replace the first one, but it has the exact same problem. Two bad units out of three. I'm sorry, that more than coincidence. These units were never QC tested and now I presume I have to pay return shipping for the second bad unit just just like the first... That's poor QC and poor customer service.