Consumer reviews for Macally G-S350SUAB2

Ratings

Category: Personal Computers
Brand: Macally
Model: G-S350SUAB2
Availability: Product availability may differ by country. In Stock (USA)
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Read Macally G-S350SUAB2 User Reviews

Macally G-S350SUAB2 Review by D. Cormack (Lake Worth, Florida)

I was searching for a suitable enclosure to provide me with a Firewire interface. I chose this because it looked to be decent plus someone commented on the great build quality (even saying it compares favorably to the standards which Apple follows. I was disappointed with the quality of the case. It feels cheap and the feet are plastic which you screw on and then affix some rubber sticker. The issue is that the plastic feet become loose and you can't screw them back in. The disk took a fair amount of effort to slide into the enclosure as well. I do appreciate that the company ships all supported data cable types though. The build quality was nowhere near to Apple's standards so disregard anyone who says so.

Macally G-S350SUAB2 Review by K. Vo (California)

The Macally G-S350SUAB2 that I am currently using is my second one from Amazon. My first enclosure was giving off sparks every time I plugged the power cable in, Amazon quickly sent me a replacement which has been working perfectly.

I mainly use this enclosure along with my Western Digital 1.5 TB Caviar Green SATA Intellipower 64 MB Cache Bulk/OEM Desktop Hard Drive WD15EARS to store my movies and TV shows. I'm using this enclosure via Firewire 800 with my 27 inch iMac and the transfer rates are great. I bought the Caviar Green because it is meant as a back up drive and I don't need the extra 1800 rpms of the Blue and Black version, as the highest bandwidth bus I can use is firewire 800. The highest bus this enclosure has is eSATA, but officially only the Mac Pro and 17 inch Macbook Pro have the ability to use eSATA (through PCIe and expresscard/34 expansion cards, respectively). Unofficially, the 2010 27 inch iMac can use eSATA through a mod, but that may very likely invalidate Apple's warranty.

The body of the enclosure is made of aluminum, so this enclosure looks awesome next to any Apple computer. The aluminum helps keep the hard drive at operating temperature through conduction, the same manner as how the iMac's aluminum unibody works. The Caviar Green is designed produce minimal heat from operation, the case is slightly warm to the touch when I am playing files from the drive. The enclosure does not dissipate sound very well, as I can hear the clanking of the hard drive pretty well. This of course depends on how loud your hard drive is, but I believe Western Digitals have one of the quieter hard drives. In my experience Seagate drives are one of the loudest.

Installation was a breeze, the least tech savvy person can install a drive into the enclosure. Though most people who go for the enclosure route are usually pretty tech savvy, as the majority of consumers purchase pre-built external drives. The one little issue I did have with installation was the LED power cable, it runs from the front of the drive bay to the back circuit board. Along this route it passes over one of the screw holes for the hard drive attachment, make sure you push it out of the way completely otherwise it will block the screw hole slightly or entirely. You don't want it to block the hole even in the slightest, as you may strip the cable when you put the screw in.

The back plate is made of plastic, which doesn't make too much of a difference as no one really sees it. It doesn't look like plastic from far away, unless you get closer and/or hold it. There are a few options for propping the enclosure up after you put the hard drive in: you can either use the provided feet and/or base stand, lay it on its side, or keep it up with out the added support. I wouldn't recommend the last option because the front and back legs are curve, making it very easy for this enclosure to tip over if you hit the desk. That would be pretty bad for the hard drive if it is turned on when it topples over, you could cause damage to the HD's platters. So I would at least recommend putting on the two feet Macally gives you.

The feet screw onto the two bottom legs each has its only rubber pad you can put under the feet so the enclosure does not slip around, which it easily does without the rubber padding. The screws that keep the feet on are in the middle, so the rubber padding will cover the screw holes, which means you either have to keep the feet on permanently or remove the pads if you want to take the feet off. I don't think the adhesive is going to last if you remove the pads too many times. The solution I came up with is using a hole puncher to cut a hole out of the middle of the pads which gives me access to the screws without removing the pads. I also found that you can remove the feet with the pads on by simply turing the feet until they come off, it won't scratch the legs, but when you try to put it back the feet may not be on tight when the feet are perpendicular to the legs. This is why I cut a hole in the pads before I placed them on.

Macally provides you with all the cables for the four different transfer ports, there are 5 ports though (Mini USB-A, eSATA, Firewire 800 x2, and Firewire 400). You are only given one firewire 800 cable, as the second firewire 800 port is used if you want to daisy chain (sequentially hook up multiple firewire 800 devices) more drives. Usually people have another firewire 800 from the second device, hence why you are only given one. The cables are adequate, but the firewire 800 cable is not as nice as the one I got from Western Digital.

I think the price is fair for this enclosure, you get four different transfer ports. I've looked at other enclosures with quad interfaces and they have similar price points. Buying a pre-built external drive with firewire 800/400 and USB 2.0 will cost you roughly the same as this enclosure plus a 60 dollar hard drive, such as the Western Digital My Book Studio 1 TB USB 2.0/FireWire 800/400, Desktop External Hard Drive. The advantages of this enclosure is that you get firewire 800 and eSATA, two of the fastest bus on an external enclosure, and you get to choose your own HD. We're not taking USB 3.0 into consideration because most drives or enclosures with USB 3.0 do not provide other bus types. It's usually only one USB 3.0 port that has backwards compatibility with USB 2.0.

I believe it works exceedingly well for its design and intended purpose, five stars. Plus it never fails when buying directly from Amazon, they have a great return policy.

Macally G-S350SUAB2 Review by Arun K. Seetharam (Coral Springs, FL)

Let me begin by giving you a brief background on why I switched to this enclosure.

I used to run an Acomodata USB 3.5 inch enclosure earlier with my 2TB Hitachi SATA hard drive. Ran it for over an year. This was almost noise free, running cool temperature-wise even with no built in fan. It had a problem though. It would just hang dead when trying to transfer a large chunk of Data (Usually greater than 2/3GB) or burning a whole DVD. It would also hang on a dead red while synchronizing my iPod. I knew it was the enclosure because the hard drive worked well with enclosures from work.

Enter Mcally UAB2. One other reason I switched to this drive is because all laptops I have are Macbook with Firewire 800. This is a pricey but nice looking enclosure. Fully aluminium except the lid at the back which is plastic. Installation was smooth and all worked first try. No problem with 2TB drives or transferring large chunks of data. Works well both with PC and Mac. Firewire 800 is blazing fast. Here are some of the things you may want to know.

- It is noisey. The full aluminium housing amplifies the noise.
- It gets really warm. Has no built-in fan.
- It will run only one port at a time. Meaning you cant connect a mac and a pc to it. It just stops the HDD.
- As I mentioned earlier, the enclosure costs as much as a 750GB hard drive.

So, I am ok with it. Not really jumping in joy.

Hope this helps!!

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