Does today enclosures consumer market prefer with or without build-in fan? The fan function for enclosure will cool down the device, but the noise level is annoyed at times. If you obtain a enclosure without a build-in fan the consumer might think the HDD is under massive of heat and might damage the date that cause HDD malfunction.
What do you prefer as consumer? Should modern day "ENCLOSURE" have or shouldn’t have building fan?
If you plan on selling large quantities of these internal enclosures and maintaining healthy reviews of the product I would highly recommend sticking with the fans within the enclosures. When I reviewed your MB122 the only thing that made this a remotely viable solution was the built-in fan. Modern hard drives get dreadfully hot, the new seagate 7200.10 series has seen a 3-5 celsius jump in temperatures when compared to the 7200.9 series. The Western Digital Raptor is notorious for hitting temperatures in excess of 50 celsius even in a well ventilated case, my processor under full load barely peaks at 45 celsius (AMD64 3200+ @ 2.8GHz, 1.4 voltes, watercooled). Just remember that your internal enclosures are competing open-air hard-drive cages that often have their own 80mm or 120mm fans keeping them cool. Heat is the enemy, do your best to avoid it.
ReplyDeleteIf you can keep the heat below the manufactures specs, than I personally could do without the fan. This is for home use, however. If a fan is needed, than the smallest, quietest slowest fan possible for the job. If there is something I can't stand personally, it's a loud computer fan.
ReplyDeleteIf it's a built in enclusure that goes into your PC case then yes I would prefer a quiet fan, but if it is an external enclosure it might not need a fan depending on what material it was made of and how well it was designed..
ReplyDeleteIt depends on the design. If it's designed to dissipate heat away from the drive, then no fan should really be required. A fan would be useful if the enclosure is more for looks than functionality.
ReplyDeletePersonally I prefer a fan rather than leaving the drive to roast in the enclosure. Heat is the enemy of electronics so anything that can help to reduce that heat will ensure a longer life for the product.
ReplyDeleteIf you're worried about the noise simple put the fan on a switch to allow the end user to switch between 12V and 5V for the fan. Design the fan circuitry to provide 12V to the fan for a half second at startup to ensure the fan will spin if set to 5V so there's no worry about the fan stalling and burning out.
I think it is better to have a enclosure that provides the best performance. If a lot of heat is being created in the enclosure then i think a fan is necessary in the enclosure. I dont think i fan would make it extremely loud but i would rather have a quality product that lasts than one that is going to burn up on me.
ReplyDeleteI think having a fan is a nice feature as it allows better cooling. I have seen other HDD enclosures without a fan and they seem to work fine. Maybe have a way to either turn it on/off or have a monitoring system or adjustable fan speed would be a nice feature.
ReplyDeleteI think that a fan would be necessary because with a hard drive in an enclosed space creates more heat. Without a fan I believe the hard drive would get way to hot possibly causing damage to the drive and ultimately causing data loss.
ReplyDeleteHeat problems can be fixed without the use of a fan. Copper and aluminium tubing has worked great for heatsinks and could most likely work well for hdd's. I can't imagine that a small fan would honestly do much of the heat dissipation. The best idea would be to have an enclosure that uses a heatsink like base, but has a small quiet fan that blows the air out of the hdd location and into the larger area of the case. The fan should not be effected by temperature to stay quiet and like I said before, its focus should not to primarily cool the hdd, but to blow away excess heat into a larger area so it doesn't float around the hdd. I don't know how the heatsink could attach to the hdd, but distortion sound from the hdd rattling against the heatsink might be a problem. All in all I think a fan should be standard, but used in different context.
ReplyDeleteI think have a fan is a plus, but maybe have a way to control the fan or turn it on or off. That way, people have a choice to if they want the fan or not.
ReplyDeletePersonally, fan in an enclosure is a plus. Though some fans are noisy, fan have save a lot of hard drives. I do not think of buying fanless enlosure soon. Fanless enclosure is good for temp use. If you want to keep the unit on for 24/7. Fan will always a be plus.
ReplyDeleteDefinitely prefer no fan. Quiet is good. Perhaps heatsink, vanes, heatpipe?
ReplyDeleteAt home I would rather have a fanless design, even the quietest Samsung HDs that I have are too loud for my taste (at least in 3,5 size, with 2,5'' it is no problem). But then the enclosure has to be designed with heat dissipating qualities in mind. Most of them are not unfortunately.
ReplyDeleteI prefer having the fan (as long as it's not too loud).
ReplyDeleteI would like to see one with a larger fan that would not need to run at higher speed to minimize noise. Or at least give an option to be able to change the fan with a quiter one.
ReplyDeleteIf I had to answer the question as it stands, I'd say "fan." But for me, the question is not really "fan or no fan?" It is "can I be confident that my HDD is operating below its max specified temperature NOW?" I don't really care if there's a fan or not; in fact, if I am confident of the temp, I'd rather not have a fan (why have something that can fail if you don't need it?).
ReplyDeleteIt's really not difficult to find fans that are quiet, yet cool efficiently. Charge me the extra money-I'll be happy to pay for quality.
ReplyDeleteDave