Comments on: Acomdata Samba 3.5-Inch Combo USB 2.0 Firewire 400

By: R. Ketcham

R. Ketcham — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 17:13:55 +0000

I have used many different external hard disk enclosures over the years. I have had varying results… cases that have melted, cases that had drive capacity limits, etc. Eventually I found the Acomdata Enclosures at Fry’s. I used their older, heavy duty cases many times. They are just excellent. Quiet, with no fan, but with excellent cooling. Easy to assemble / disassemble. I recently started using their lower cost and lighter weight Samba Enclosures. My previous experience is with the USB/PATA/SATA case. They work great. Same excellent attributes as the heavy duty cases.

Today I received four of the items described on this page. From the Amazon product description, it looks like the perfect, universal disk drive enclosure – USB/Firewire/PATA IDE/SATA. It is not. In spite of what the Amazon product description says, there is no PATA IDE capability. The Acomdata web page has the description right, so I assume Amazon simply blew it on this one.

Still an excellent case – since it is not universal – 4 stars instead of 5. But, if you need the PATA IDE capability, look elsewhere.

By: Fredrick Chen

Fredrick Chen — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 16:53:33 +0000

I purchased this external enclosure to house a 1TB harddrive. I wanted to create an external 1TB hard drive to use with my Western Digital HD TV box….

Installing a HD into this enclosure was a breeze. The enclosure itself seems to be well constructed. After installing the HD, it worked just fine with any PC using the USB or Firewall…However, the WD TV device was unable to read from this enclosure. This probably is a problem with WD TV, but still I have other cheaper enclosure that worked just fine with WD TV.

By: J. B. Borders

J. B. Borders — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 15:22:05 +0000

Contrary to any specifications given on Amazon’s own web site, this device DOES NOT SUPPORT legacy Hard Disk Drives that use a Parallel ATA type (PATA) connection. The vendor (AcomData) explicitly states that it will ONLY work with Serial ATA drives (SATA). AcomData does have a device that will support PATA drives but only using a USB 2.0 connection to your PC / MAC. According to AcomData, the “rub” comes in because the circuits on-board the unit were designed for either USB or Fire-Wire and SATA drive connections.

By: Robert M. Smith

Robert M. Smith — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 14:16:32 +0000

Acomdata Samba 3.5-Inch Combo USB 2.0 Firewire 400 (IEEE 1394a) Enclosure SMBXXXU2FE-BLK (Black)works great, very pleased, gonna buy more.

By: Jaycoub

Jaycoub — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 13:17:29 +0000

Well worth the purchase.I have been able to boot into the external hard drive with ease using firewire.