This one’s for a friend in the US. Budget is $50-100. Had bad experiences with the all-in-one so looking for a GOOD enclosure, meaning data integrity, better mechancial build, keep the drive cool, something durable without any flashy lights.
As it will be on literally 24/7/365 x n yrs.
sticking with an xternal as there is no need atm for a NAS
Fire away 
try vantec. search newegg 
also a company starting with an E----something… also on newegg only…read the reviews for the various models. ur budget is good 
( if only for the box 
)
+1
10chars…
So what do the good ppl @newegg think is the best enclosure for the money ?
Searching there for enclosure and sorting by rating, gives a list like this and the first place goes to this AMC model.
I was thinking that any model with a fan would be a liability, as running it as long as i require, then its only a matter of time the fan bearings run out of lube and its not too easy to replace these fans. So a fanless model ie passive cooling might be a good idea. Its not like the enclosure is going to be doing heavy work allthe time anyway, so this sounded like a better idea.
Now i’d have thought that would be the end of the story but since i also need this enclosure to be on all the time which lead me to an interesting article on Dansdata where he talks about spindown and goes further in a following article where he lists what he has found.
Before finding out about spindown was alternatively thinking of just getting a simple USB to IDE/SATA adapter. Stick in some modded box with a 80mm generic fan and that would be it. But then tho this is cheap and easy to maintain, it won’t support spin down either 
Why the hell is it so hard to get a bloody enclosure thats durable and won’t kill your HD at the same time :@
back to more research