Review on 💽 Inateck FE3001 Aluminum USB 3.0 SATA HDD Enclosure for 3.5" Hard Drive by Malik Munns

This high quality case adopts the original ASMedia ASM1153E controller. This is not a tool-less case, so it may be better suited for fixed or semi-permanent installations. This isn't just because you need tools to install or remove the drive, but also because the case is properly attached (i.e., with screws) to the drive, so the whole thing doesn't fall apart when you move it. I prefer such rugged cases for NAS use cases. I bought this case because I was having trouble with an external hard drive (WD Elements) reporting the wrong size and not correctly passing some SATA flags from the original box. I suspect that the WD controller was reporting the size of the disk minus a space reserved, which was an issue for my use case (non-raid server). I pulled the drive out of the original case, put it in an Inateck box and haven't had any problems since. The housing is made of metal and ensures adequate cooling of the drive even when consumers are constantly switched on. In my test, a chassis-mounted drive was added to an existing array as a parity drive. Parity recovery, which is basically a high-speed read-only boot, took 12 hours and the drive temperature stabilized at 42°C (22°C ambient), which was comparable to existing drives in a PC case. In other words, the "closed" drive didn't get any hotter than directly attached drives.