I have a couple of the Vantec NST-360U2 cases – the shiny fanless metal fingerprint-magnet ones.
I’ve been running one as a general storage drive (running 24/7 for a month, put away on the shelf for a month, run up & down stairs between PCs for a week etc etc) for about a year with an 80GB Seagate drive in it.
I’ve also got 2 with 4 year old 300GB Maxtor drives in which have been running 24/7 on my slug since April. OK, not the longest test case but the best I can offer!
Yes, they run rather warm but I guess all the heat that’s radiated from the case is heat that’s not inside cooking the drive 🙂
Two samples which have survived 4 months doesn’t really guarantee you anything though! They’ll probably both die tomorrow now.