SANOXY USB 2.0 External 2.5-Inch IDE HDD Enclosure Case for Laptop - Blue

The one star is for the product, not the attention I got from the seller. The seller was responsive and quickly tried to address my issue which was that the product just did not work. Given a working EIDE laptop drive, the enclosure sent was of such poor quality that I an quite surprised the seller sent it. What arrived was an empty metal shell, two plastic end pieces, one with a very very small EIDE header on it and a toy screwdriver. Packed loosely in a clear sandwich bag, the screw driver rounded immediately. The metal was not even hardened and so as it tried to turn the self-threading screws provided, what started out as a phillips screwdriver became an awl. I was also taken aback by the absence of any mounting board. External EIDE drives need a mounting board to screw the drive to because it guides the drive into the enclosure properly and holds it securely in place. There was no board so the drive simply flopped around in the case as you would turn the body one way or the other. And, as I mentioned, it did not work. My drive is listed as requiring 700 ma of current and I reported that to the seller along with the picture here included. The seller quickly refunded my money.

I purchased this to house a working IDE drive I removed and replaced from my Laptop with a larger storage drive and wanted to keep the old drive as a portable storage device. Unfortunately I could not get any of my three computers to fully recognize this device. All three of the computers would recognize the new hardware and would install the USB to IDE driver but would not setup a new drive that I could access. No new drive letters (or Disks) show up in Windows Explorer, Device manager, or the Disk Storage Manager. The device would just blink the LED indicated from red to green continuously. I removed the drive and installed in my desk top using an adapter and was able to verify the drive was still good. I decided to reformate the drive to clear out the old data and then reinstalled it into the cased but there was no difference in the operation. I also connected to an external USB hub which has the ability to source 1 amp of current if needed but that did not help the situation. Fortunately his unit was inexpensive because by the time I finished trying to get it to work I missed the return deadline. However, I would have probably chosen not to return it since only partial refunds were possible and the shipping charges for the return were not covered. So beware of this product because you may end up with a defective one like I did. Bad right out of the box! Be sure, I will take note of the device and the vendor I purchased it from to ensure that I do not get burnt again!

This thing is really as simple and easy as it gets, and actually does more than most people need. My primary hobby used to be computers, and even though I've moved on to different things, I still help people with their computers if need be.As long as you're careful to ground yourself (so that static electricity doesn't kill your hard drive), you don't even need the enclosure (though don't keep the hard drive exposed for too long). This makes it quick and easy to test drives or use old and oversized laptop hard drives, or hard drives with built in heatsinks etc. (This is why another reviewer had to file down the tabs)There was one small hiccup that I ran into, but it was on the software end, not the hardware one. If you buy a new or pre-formatted hard drive to use in this, it may not come up in 'My Computer', even though the computer will report that everything is working alright. What you need to do is to go to Device Manager -> Disk Drives -> ::Your harddrive:: Properties and under the Volumes tab, click Populate. Finally, right click on a link for 'My Computer' and click 'Manage'. This should bring up Computer Management. Under 'Disk Management' on the left, find your drive and right click and select 'Add new partition'. After that, follow the brief wizard to format it appropriately (I recommend NTFS unless you really know what you're doing).Let the formatting run - you can do this all through this enclosure, unlike some where you have to get an adapter and plug in the hdd internally. Once it's done it should pop right up in My Computer ready to use.Other than that, the usb cable doesn't care which direction it goes in, making it pretty fool proof. The manual is relatively useless though - a lot of words got lost in translation, calling different menus by the wrong names etc.