StarTech.com 2.5" SATA USB 3.1 Gen 2 Hard Drive Enclosure - w/USB Type C and Type A Cables - USB 3.0 backwards compatible (S251BU31315)

Easy fit, you may just need to format the hard drive if is a new one.

I bought this as an 'upgrade' to my 2013 model, which has been very useful. This unit is solid, and it works, so why the low rating? My intended use is to swap drives. The old model was a bit flimsy internally, but I have found it is more practical. This model has a rigid plastic tray, the problem being, that there is very little difference to the size of the drive. A little fiddly to get a disk in, but getting one out, means you cannot slide the driver out, but have to 'lever' it, causing stress on the (fixed) connector of the circuit board. This can be done, but I am concerned how many times I can do so without damaging the board/connector. NB It would be useful to have a cut-out at the back of the plastic tray, to help push the drive out. As it is, there is a cut-out near to the connector. This gives just enough levitation of the drive to get it out (although, you may be pressing on the circuit board of the drive).For the price, I would expect a much better engineered solution. It would be easy enough to have a sliding back. Also, as mentioned in another review, you get plenty of screws ...but surely there would be better solutions like fixed/sliding pins. My point being, screws can be lost, especially if you don't keep a drive in place all the time.If you just want to keep a drive in the enclosure, I would expect it to work well for you, and it is externally very nice :)

Robust-feeling little enclosure, the external case is all aluminium and just as big as it needs to be.The power light is white, and is nice and small. The position of the LED suggests that the lid is intended to be the base, so if you use a low-profile HDD it will move a little and rest on the lid, but that doesn't seem to affect the performance. I've had it running for two weeks now without error, and it doesn't feel too warm. The included screws are almost essential to keep the case closed.StarTech.com provides detailed data sheets on their website, which is a great idea but the only one I looked at was inaccurate. (I was interested in the region of manufacture - the online certificate said Taiwan, the stickers say "Made in China". Not hugely surprising as multiple locations are the norm these days.) That isn't Amazon's fault, just something to be aware of if you want the minute details.

I ordered this as a replacement to the ElecGear Aluminium Cover SuperSpeed+ External Hard Drive Enclosure (https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07932W9ZS/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1) that I had previously ordered for my Seagate Barracuda 3TB 2.5" SATA HDD, which has a 15mm form factor. Most enclosures tend to only accommodate the drives up to around 10mm, so it is problematic finding a sufficiently thick enclosure and whilst the ElecGear enclosure fitted the HDD (and I quite liked it, aesthetically) it seemed there were compatibility issues preventing my HDD from performing correctly. THIS StarTech enclosure, however, suffers no such issues and fitting the HDD was extremely simple. The build quality is good, although it might not look as pleasing on the eye as other, more 'svelte' enclosures, and it does cost a little more than some other caddies, but I am more than happy with this product and would highly recommend to others.

Product was used to convert Western Digital 320GB HDD IDE/PATA I/F to a USB3.0 I/F for use on a Dell Precision M6800. The device is supplied with a USB3.0 flex, all the machine screws one needs, and even a screwdriver (see below).HDD and NTFS, with 3 Primary and 4 Logical partitions. All partitions mounted very quickly (about 5s). Device works through various levels of standby, sleep, and hibernate; moving seamlessly between them - this is frequently a problem for poorly designed USB I/F's, but not here. Windows 7 Ultimate diskmgmt.msc has no problems. One interesting fact - a Sabrent supplied microUSB 3.0 flex does not work with these drives!There is one minor hiccup. The screw heads are all designed for a pozidrive type tool, but the screwdriver is a very poorly made 'Philips' type tool. It does not work well with the machine screws. Change the screwdriver and this device could be benchmark class.I shall be watching StarTech.com for more good products.

I bought this drive last year and got myself a 1Tb drive to go with it.The initial enclosure appeared to be broken and a replacement was sent, however this was doing the same thing. Each time to pressed the Mode button to change to a different ISO folder, it would loop through the ISO folder LED lights and return back to the HDD.Eventually with the assistance of the support team and my colleagues in the office, we were able to determine that the Virtual CD-ROM function would only work with a 256Gb drive maximum. (We tried my 1Tb, plus another 500Gb I'd bought).Aside from that, this enclosure is fantastic to use.The drives are easy to swap over and the Virtual CD-ROM works a treat and has saved me a lot of time and effort in burning and carrying CD/DVD's around.Some really old servers don't like the USB Virtual CD-ROM function, but these are 10-15yr old servers and not likely something most people will encounter very often.Would I buy this again? Absolutely!