even my favorite OWC Mercury-on-the-go has some problems with some users. Go figure...
I've got an OWC aluminum enclosure and it
smokes almost anything else on USB speed. Whatever they're using for a sata/usb bridge chip, it's a real winner. I put in a drive I know can do 89mb/sec, and it does 32mb/sec sustained over USB, which is the spec's practical max. This, compared with other that can vary anywhere from 8.9 - 25mb.sec. Most of the cheap external adapters and docks do 9mb/sec, and most of the bundled usb drives (mybook etc) do 18.
I'm referring specifically to their "0mb" empty enclosures. Expensive for an empty enclosure, but worth every penny.
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other%20World%20Computing/MEFW924AL1K/I had one of those on my christmas list last year, and had to be sure to specifically educate them that this was an
empty enclosure. When she was on the phone with them the guy said "you
do realize this is an empty enclosure, right?"
Of course the port on your mac has to be up to the task. The left port on this mbp for example, does 1/2 the speed of the right port due to the internal hubbing, and from my talks with Netgear engineers, Apple's PCI interface for USB effectively caps added USB cards to 18mb./sec. (which really annoys me, my backup machine has TWO of those 4 port cards in it for its 9 external drives, and speed JUST STINKS, all 2tb drives had to be moved to the built-in USB ports)
