Hard drive enclosure question

Been looking at some external drive enclosures and noticed that many of them mention a size limit e.g. 400GB and was wandering why this was. What limits the enclosures from using higher capacity drives?

 

thickness of the drive?

i dont know how thick a 400gb is but i have one 80gb and one 250gb. both seagates and tha 250 is quite a bit thicker than the 80

 

It is in the controller that they use, some controllers are not designed to address such large capacity drive. Its a bit like the old motherboards not taking larger drives.

 

Can anyone else confirm that it's the controller that limits the drive capacity?

If so does anyone know if the controllers in these enclosures can be firmware upgraded to support higher capacities?

 

uhh, no.

 

It's the controller, maybe the ventilation but I doubt it so highly that I don't know why I just said it.

 

Anyone know if any of the controllers are firmware upgradeable? Also does the size limit apply to esata connections as I'm sure the enclosures wouldn't need a controller for that?

 

Ithink esata would be safe but I'm sure it'll say on the esata caddy's web page if it supports greater than 400GB...

 

Just buy a drive enclosure that doesn't have a limit on drive size.

And yes, it's the controller.

 

Could you mention some of these limitless capacity enclosures please. Also my question still stands on whether any of the controllers out there are firmware upgradeable to support higher capacities.