I like the look of the little PiDrive enclosure that matches the official Raspberry Pi enclosure. The $7.99 one. This PiDrive enclosure is small, looks like it’s barely bigger than the PiDrive itself, and it doesn’t appear to have any ventilation holes.
Is heat build up a problem? Probably not for normal use (otherwise the enclosure should not be sold!) But how about for heavy PiDrive disk usage? I don’t expect to have heavy PiDrive usage, but you still need to plan for the worst case scenario.
Thanks in advance for any insight into potential heat issues!
Raspberry Pi 1 and 2 should be fine (used a Pi2 in small plastic enclosure for about a year with no issues)
Raspberry Pi 3 is a different story … that thing gets HOT, got temp warnings all the time.
Bought an Aluminum FLIRC case… no problems since 
Hi, the PiDrive enclosure that sits under the Official Raspberry Pi Case is designed to accommodate the PiDrive’s heat generation. In fact, the bottom half of the enclosure is the same part as was used in our WD Passport product line.
Pi3 does consume more power than Pi2 and Pi1, but the Pi is mounted on top of the PiDrive enclosure. As heat will rise from the Pi, the PiDrive and enclosure will be OK.
Thanks.
Thanks very much for the replies. Eventually, I decided to get a 4Tb WD Red NAS drive in a fan cooled external enclosure rather than a PiDrive. I wanted more storage than the PiDrive provides, plus the ability to re-purpose this external drive later if I wanted to. Of course a PiDrive could be re-purposed as well, but a Red drive can be re-purposed for more different things.
