Monster Technology

I have several aluminum enclosures, which have vent holes in the front/back of the unit. Despite the marketing claims of heat dissipation, I have had to add external fans blowing over the cases.

This is what led me to look for a better design. I now have two of the ineo cases with 2TB WD green drives in them.

These have a complete mesh front/side face, which provides a large amount of surface area for ventilation where the heat can actually escape vs. most other front/back designs which do not promote the heat escaping as it rises off of the drive.

This configuration with a WD Green drive runs nice and cool. Althouth it costs more to buy components this way than a pre-packaged external drive, I have found this to be the best configuration for a fanless cool running drive. I’ve been in the industry since the first PC and heat is the primary enemy of your data and drive, and losing 2TB of data of data will cost more in time/frustration than the cost of the drive/case combo. I would reccomend this case over any of the manufacturers external solutions. They alway seem to get hot under high usage, or high capacity, non-green drives.

Despite what external drive vendors claim, I personally reccomend a fan in the case in most situations. This case with a “Green” drive is the exception to that reccomendation.

As a bonus, this comes with all hardware to utilize IDE or SATA drives.
Rating: 5 / 5

I purchased this HDD box as a replacement for the stock plastic external HDD box from WD that had a 1TB green drive inside. The WD box developed a problem with the USB connector on it’s PCB, and rather then jump through all the hoops to send the unit in under warranty, I decided to buy the Ineo box and transfer the hard drive (which is fully functional). The Ineo box is a vast improvement over the stock WD plastic box. The WD box had no ventilation holes whatsoever, plus the fact that it was made of plastic means the HDD was guaranteed to run hot. The Ineo box, on the other hand, has one side that is completely made of a metal mesh screen to ensure that the HDD can easily dissipate heat. And the hard drive mounting tray and box are made of metal, which also helps with heat dissipation.

The fit, finish, and design of the Ineo box are very well done. The instructions are well illustrated and written, and are very easy to follow. Total installation time was about 10 minutes. The only tool you’ll need is a small Philips screwdriver. There is only one screw that holds the hard drive tray in the housing. Once you remove that, the tray slides out and you install the HDD into the tray with four screws, attach the appropriate cables (IDE or SATA), and slide the tray assembly back into the housing, tighten the one screw on the side, and your done. Two things to be aware of though: 1)when I went to slide the tray back in it seemed to get hung up on the housing, so don’t force it, take your time and it’ll go in just fine, 2)if you’re installing a SATA drive be aware that the SATA cable is a tight fit and it helps to bend it to the appropriate curvature before you install it, and you may have to press down on it slightly to get it to clear the mesh screen when sliding the tray back in.

The other nice thing about this Ineo enclosure is that they even include a eSATA cable, which was a big help for me (nothing extra to have to buy). I connected the drive to my XP desktop, formatted it, and it was good to go. I currently have the Ineo hooked up to an Asus O!Play HDP-R1 – Digital multimedia receiver with the eSATA cable to play DVD ISO files, and it works excellent. The drive runs nice and quiet and cool. If you’re looking for a well built external hard drive enclosure that will keep your HDD cool, I would definitely recommend this Ineo unit. I will definitely be buying a couple more of these!
Rating: 5 / 5

I chose this enclosure because it has more options than most. It has an eSATA port as well as USB and it works on IDE or SATA hard drives. With it you can convert an IDE drive to work with an eSATA port, pretty nice if you have an old IDE drive sitting around. It has a nice black aluminum finish that matches my computer case finish perfectly as well as two LEDs, blue for power and red for activity, that match my computer LEDs. There is a power switch on the back and it’s powered by a regular DC adapter so it would be easy to replace if necessary. Finally, it has rubber feet if you choose to lie it flat and a small plastic stand if you want to stand it vertically as in the picture.

When I got the enclosure it was easy to open and install my hard drive with the included screws. It came with a short IDE cable and a short SATA cable so you could use your choice of drive. I chose to use a SATA drive. Hooking up the SATA cable is where I encountered my only problem. The SATA cable was very short, about 2 – 2.5 inches long. Unfortunately, the orientation of how the hard drive must be mounted and the location of the sata connector on the circuit board required the cable to be twisted. The SATA cable wasn’t very flexible due to it being so short so with a twist in the cable it protruded too high to slide the cover in place to close up the enclosure. I pressed downward on the twisted cable in an effort to move it down so I could close the case and the connector on the SATA cable broke where it attached to the hard drive. I contacted Ineo with the problem and they simply asked for a copy of my Amazon invoice and a picture of the item so they could send the correct replacement. I did so the same day and they shipped me a replacement SATA cable the next business day.

I was took extra care with the new SATA connector and it didn’t break. I’m very satisfied with the product and the service. I’ll buy another Ineo enclosure soon.
Rating: 5 / 5