My experience with WD Pi Drive Enclosure

General Discussion
1

Hi,

In the following thread I asked this community a good enclosure for Raspberry + HDD:

It seems that Raspberry communities in general haven’t made a big effort to create a good enclosure for Raspberry + HDD. HDD is fundamental for a media center but probably people use NAS for this job. However, I still think a good case for Raspberry + HDD is necessary. So after few searches I only found three solutions (discarding very big home made solutions) that were good for me.

  1. the first solution is this:
    Raspberry Pi B+/2 + HDD 2.5' case by miginv - Thingiverse
    that I immediately discarded because for me a media center should be something beautiful to see since it stay in a living room.

  2. option is Plusberry. That is the best choice at the moment on the market. Its cost is high but it worth that money. I didn’t buy it due to some user complain on the project page:
    Plusberry Pi - Media Box running on Raspberry Pi | Indiegogo
    However, this evening I just read the author update (3 days ago) that guarantee the project is not a scam and the missing plusberry will be shipped soon.

  3. WD PI Drive enclosure that I bought last week once I read all the bad comments in 2.

This morning the enclosure arrived and I must admit it is the worst thing I have ever seen. I cannot believe Western Digital can produce a product like this:

the italian web page does not report you need their cable so I didn’t buy them. I used my own.

First of all the enclosure is composed by two piece that cannot be attached with screws. The two piece are absolutely moveable. That is insane. HDD and Raspberry are separated by a piece of plastic but when you attach cables there is high risk the two circuits collide .

But the horrible part is that on top the enclosure is completely open and you see the Raspberry and HDD circuits. Now I have my TV lay on a furniture that is lower than my eyes so the circuits are all visible. Now looking better at the web page I must say that it is visible this problem but when I saw it I didn’t think it was a photo of the complete mounted product.

At this point I do not want to buy their cable because the enclosure was absolutely the worst thing I have ever seen. I would like to know your experience.

At this point considering that Plusberry authors said that their are starting to ship again their product I think this is the only option possible. This obviously is my modest opinion. I reported it here hoping it could be useful for someone else.

2

Try this: Limited Edition Raspberry Pi 3 and Raspberry Pi 2 XBMC MEDIAPI+ Case box with integrated IR, USB Hub and Media Remote… Bought it and frankly, I love it!

3

Thanks. It seems a good solution. Probably a bit expensive, but a good solution.

4

Hi All,

I write again on this thread because I would like to show you the solution I found for my Media Center:
http://sasadangelo.altervista.org/raspberry-media-center/

The website I linked it’s a personal blog that I only use for my personal notes. It is not designed to be public. I just wrote this post to share my solution with this community.

The article discusses all the possible solutions I evaluated and the reason why I discarded them. This includes also the OSMC PiDrive solution, that I consider today a good solution under some circumstances.

For comments, feedbacks, and opinions you can write here on this thread or directly on the blog.

I have duplicated this post also on another thread where in the past I asked info for Raspberry+HDD enclosure. The reason I did it is that in the future if someone read this thread could find my solution as alternative to WD Pi Drive solution.