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

THE SHORT STORY[WARNING!!! - this will NOT work with 2.5" SATA drives, the ones that you would typically find in a laptop or in your PS3. Search specifically for 2.5" SATA cases.]Installation consists on pushing the HDD in and screwing 2 little screws using the little screwdriver provided. It's all done in less than 5 minutes but you need good eyes and a steady hand because the little screws are VERY small.The disc, once in the enclosure, connects to the computer via an (included) USB wire which powers the disc. It's immediately recognized by Vista or Windows 7 or your PS3 and you are ready to use it. Recommended.End of short story.SPECSYou get the following:- The aluminum enclosure with the circuitry to the USB interface. It's important for the case to be 'metal' because metal helps dissipate the heat, unlike 'plastic' which would trap it inside.- 3 little screws which is one more than you need but, them being so small, it's good to have an extra just in case.- A screwdriver for the little screws.- About 1.5" long USB interface cable.- Some low-grade plastic-rubber or rubberized plastic protective sleeve which you are not likely to use.- Strangely, I did NOT get a 'manual', not that one is needed but I see that others got theirs.RATINGFor the price, it doesn't get much better. It's all that's needed and then some - extra screw, screwdriver - and the price is right. It's 5 stars.If money is not an issue and you want to use your enclosed HDD as a fashion statement, this would NOT be the right item.

This case worked great for what I wanted it to do. I replaced the hard drive in my laptop and needed to transfer my old files to the new drive. I used the free trial version of Western Digital's Acronis software to migrate the files. I placed my old drive in this case and installed the new drive in the laptop. The transfer was flawless, with everything moved to the new, bigger drive with no problems. Now, I keep the old drive in the case and use it to back up my files from time to time.I suppose it could serve as a portable drive enclosure, too. But if I was going to use it for that, I would find a thin strip of rubber to pad the drive inside the case. That's because the drive is just a little loose when it's installed. It certainly works fine for replacing the hard drive in a laptop, or other occasional use, but I would question its durability if you were toting it back and forth to school or the office. The fit and finish is OK, especially for how inexpensive it is. And, while it's no work of art, it's definitely functional.The bottom line is, this case does exactly what it's supposed to. And it does it very inexpensively. I'd recommend it to anybody looking for a light duty, occasional use hard drive case.

I have a bunch of spare 2.5" laptop hard drives sitting around and decided I needed to do something with them rather than having them collect dust in the drawer.This is a no frills 2.5" external enclosure. It comes with the bare necessities to get you running:- Cheap Aluminum enclosure with cheap powdercoat finish. Has the tactile feel of spraypaint on aluminum siding. This will wear easily.- Tiny baggy with two small screws to fasten the USB to 2.5" IDE adapter to the enclosure- Tiny screwdriver- Cheap faux leather sleeve made out of some weird stinky synthetic material- 14" USB cable with splitter for daisy chaining devices.- Slip of paper manual that I didn't readThat's actually quite a lot of loot for $6.00. Considering Prime got this to me in 2 days for free, the price point of this really works on so many levels.The box this item came shipped in was way too big for the item- about the size of 3 stacked dvds-- wasteful! Installing this is very straight forward, albeit I did a tiny hack to improve the quality of the device. When the hard drive is installed as intended, there is a bit of wiggle room and play in the drive-- this will eventually wear and loosen the IDE connection and cause the drive to jostle needlessly, reducing its life. To resolve this, I cut out a piece of the cardboard box the enclosure came in, and squeezed it between the exposed PCB (the belly) of the drive, and the aluminum enclosure. This provided a tight snug fit and ensures the HDD's PCB will never ground out on the case. Sweet.It's neat that they included a tiny screwdriver, but if you have a small philips head with a magnetized tip, I recommend you use that instead, as YOU WILL drop or lose the screws using the included screwdriver.The sleeve is stinky and cheap feeling, but I recommend using it if you have nothing else, as the cheapness of the paint will have it rubbing off on your pocket or fingers. I intend to either wrap the enclosure in duct tape (it'll look like a small improvised plastic explosive), or if I'm bored one day, sand and polish for svelt appearance.There are no vents on this enclosure, albeit there are some small gaps toward the plastic end caps. Hasn't gotten hot enough to warrant it, but I may a drill a hole in the enclosure, approximately where the HDD breather vent is (the HDD has a label to never cover that hole, yet the case does exactly that).I don't recommend daisy chaining USB hard drives; there is probably only enough juice to safely power one hard drive.Overall, this is a fantastic buy for the price. It's not fancy, but it's not meant to be. If you want fancy, easy, and something to show off, there are plenty of enclosures available that are 5 times the price that do more or less of the same thing.

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.

As a computer-not-so-saavy person, I appreciate how easy this product was to use. I didn't even need instructions (and that's really saying something). This is a great product for when you're in a bind and just need an efficient way to get your data from Point A to Point B. Admittedly, the construction is shoddy, but if you're just looking for a short term solution, it's tolerable. The biggest problem I had was that the endcaps didn't fit right after I inserted my harddrive. The fit seemed perfect outside of the aluminum case, but when the drive was inside the case, the plastic tabs that hold on the endcap created too snug a fit. I couldn't get the endcap on, and had to file the tabs down -not a huge problem, but a bit of a nuisance.Given the low price and the fact that it gets the job done without too much complication, I would buy this product again (but only as a short-term solution).

My laptop finally gave in and died on me. So I purchased this and it was very helpful in retrieving my data. Not much to say. You carefully insert your IDE HDD without bending the pins and plug it the USB into your computer and everything installs automatically. Easy! I'm so glad I purchased this. I have to older laptops that I use and both of them use IDE/ATA so this will become handy just in case my other laptop dies.The aluminum case is good for less heat. I would recommend that you use clear tape to hold the drive in place lol, that's what I did. The baby screw driver and tiny screws are a pain in the butt. I didn't want to strip the screws or mess anything up to put a little clear tape across the top to hold my drive+pins in place and guess what.....IT WORKS FLAWLESS and you can't even see the the tape [because it's clear duh ] Seriously for $5.00 you can't ask for more.

This item arrived quickly with all parts present and carefully packaged. Instructions were included, but are not necessary, as this device is easy enough to use without them.I love the construction of this enclosure. It is a sharp-looking blue color with black end pieces, and the drive light features red (inactive/unmounted) and green (ready to work). Installation of the drive into the enclosure is a snap: simply pop the hard drive out of your laptop, plug the head cap onto it, slip it into the enclosure, and fasten with the set screws.The included sleeve is wonderful and protects the finish from scratches. It's not padded, but it does a decent job of keeping everything safe. The USB cable is a Y-style cable, designed for using an extra port on your computer for power. In my experience this extra connection is not necessary, but this depends on whether you are plugging the drive into a powered port or not. You might need that extra plug if using the drive on a USB hub. If plugging directly to your computer, you can probably put this cable back in the box and use a standard USB cable.Like other reviewers, I have a problem with the included set screws. They are much too small and if you drop one, you'll spend lots of time looking for it. However, the holes receiving the screws did not strip out on me. Honestly, a well-placed piece of the right kind of tape on the seal between the enclosure and the head cap would probably work just as well.This enclosure could probably stand to be a little thinner from top to bottom. My drive moves around a bit inside the enclosure, but not enough to be a problem; it is usually sitting on a desk, so there's no opportunity for the tail end of the drive (first into the enclosure) to "flap".Make sure to remove any adapters your hard drive has on it before plugging it to the board for this enclosure. I used this enclosure on a hard drive fresh out of a laptop, and it had such an adapter. This is pretty easy to figure out, but just keep your eyes open for it.Drive recognition is great with this enclosure, and the drive is ready to use almost immediately after plugging it in.Keep a few of these enclosures around for making external drives from dead laptops. I am very happy with this product, and I will definitely buy more.

Just got this a week or so ago. What a deal. Works fine for short money. It's clearly not a fancy piece of highly engineered hardware. But I was able to drop a new hard drive into it and have it up an running in no time. The plastic end piece that holds the end of hard drive (opposite the connectors) in place took a little jiggling to get the drive to align into the slot, but once I got that to line up the case closed up nicely and holds the drive snugly. No complaints at all - got much more value than I paid for... Woudl definitely purchase again.***************Okay so here it is 3 months later and I have been having problems where the product is no longer recognized by either of my computers. I do not swap drives in and out of the enclosure - I only plug the complete assembly in to my computer once every weeks or two for a few hours or so. Light usage. It got flakey one day before finally quitting and has not worked since.I had just written it off and was taking the drive out and shopping for a new enclosure when I realized that there is some looseness to how the drive fits into the enclosure which had allowed the drive to partially unseat from the connector built into the enclosure. Since I do not swap the drive in and out I never had the chance to notice or re-seat the drive. Pushed the drive back onto the plug and it works. Guess I will be inserting a something to snug up how the drive fits within the enclosure as I reassemble...

When I opened it, the color was not right, but I really don't care the color. The item was not in the proper box. It was in zipper plastic bag.I put my 40G hard drive in the enclosure and connect to my PC with the USB cable, but the PC did not find the drive. So I tried with a different USB cable, and it works.I tested the original cable with my another hdd, and the cable worked fine with that. But the cable does not work with this enclosure even it came together. So Weird!!