2.5 Inch HDD Enclosure - Hard Disk Drive External Case Caddy - USB 2.0 IDE, for HDD, Solid State Drive SSD - Tool Free

Not the sturdiest of enclosures but fulfilled my needs.Needed to clone my Car's IDE hardrive after the main unit went faulty and it did this without any issues.

Good but much better available.

Bought to replace an external caddy whose pcb has died, drive fitted in in seconds very simple to do, plug it in and all I got was a winking led. No communication with the pc. after a few days away with work ive revisited the unit and plugged it in using the (short) supplied cable, not the (longer) mini USB cable i previously used.. There must be a wiring difference in the cables, as it functions 100%.

I bought this for a neighbour of mine after he was impressed with my own.He had an old Acer laptop with a screen fault and was going to scrap it. he decided, after some pushing to invest £5.00 and use his old hard drive to store/use some of his 'iTune' collection.He then discovered he could use it to store downloaded films and watch them, via USB, on his TV without having to burn them to disc.It is also a great companion for the Xenta HDMI Upscaling Mini Media Player / Decoder Divx USB/SD, sold on Amazon. Just copy your images, videos or audio to the no hassle drive (shows up as external drive in my computer) and away you go. (You can format the drive to NTFS for use in this player).The only concern I had was that it was not recognised on one of my computers using the cable from my own caddy. Why this should happen is beyond me, same type of 2 plug USB cable??? It does however come with its own cable which worked OK (2 USB plugs in case you need the extra power supply as in some older computers) and full instructions.Truly plug and play. Simples.

I wanted 3 IDE cases but I received 2 and a SATA case. When ordering, I saw the offer for 3 different colours. Since I was buying 3 anyway I went for that, not realising that they had slipped in a SATA case at the very bottom. Well this is down to me not reading the description properly so let's move on to the cases themselves.The first one I opened was the SATA caddy and my initial thought was, "Oh God, they've sent me 3 SATA caddys." I checked the invoice and it was on this I noticed the order of 2 IDE and 1 SATA. I discarded the useless SATA caddy and wondered how many others were duped into buying something the SATA cases that they're obviously unable to sell.In the IDE caddy, which is what this review is about (do you hear me now about the SATA caddy being included with these) I spent 2 hours trying to get the drive recognised by my system. Much of this time was spent hitting Google. There were all kinds of theories ranging from a bug where some older drives are not recognised by Windows 7 to 64Bit not being a reliable way to copy from a 32Bit.I wrote to GIZMO and asked them for their opinion. They ignored me completely.The next day, I thought I saw some of the pins exposed slightly in the connector so I pushed the drive in harder, much harder. My arm was trembling from the strain and the exposed pins didn't look like they had moved at all. Anyway I plugged in the USB cable before closing the case to check if it works and PRESTO!!! The drive was found. Right there under Computer I saw Drive G: Then it was gone, then it returned long enough for me to read the contents on the disk, then it was gone again.With it leaving and returning, I determined this was similar behaviour witnessed with a loose SCART lead behind the TV, so I fold paper and wedged it between the case and the end of the drive. <- READ THIS AGAIN. I plugged in the USB lead again and the drive stayed found. I moved the drive to see if it stays found and it did.I replaced the other half of the caddy and plugged in the USB and there was nothing. The drive was no found. I was thinking the packed folded paper wasn't enough, but I tried the lead again after removing the lid from the caddy. It was found again.Obviously the caddy when joined together was shorting out the drive. So I ripped a piece of Tesco carrier bag and placed over the drive before replacing the lid of the caddy. I was losing patience here because I should NOT have to be doing this.I plugged in the USB lead and still nothing. Maybe I needed to wrap the plastic right round the drive but that would mean also disturbing the folded paper packed at the end, so my patience just left me altogether.What I do now is keep the caddy fully assembled with the drive inside, but I removed the lid when I need to use it. I KID YOU NOT.The other reviews are clearly about an older better model, or they're written by relatives, friends or staff of Gizmo. It's easy for people to keep changing their name and writing multiple reviews about a product.Seriously, dont't think about buying this caddy. I wrote to GIZMO again and gave them two days to explain to me my issues before I submitted this review. I even told them I was writing the review in two days time. They ignored me. Is this surprising? Not to me.

I was trying to help out my brother who's laptop had died with lots of photos and documents still on it. I spent ages being clever and trying to do a repair on Win XP and not being very successful when somebody said why not just get a caddy and take off what you need and the format the blighter. I have to admit I didnt have much faith in a device that costs about the same as a happy meal, and when it arrived my initial thoughts were cheap, flimsy and probably another blind alley. How wrong could I be, these units are simple to use, just open the case plug in the hard drive (yippee I got the right type first time)and connect up to your PC / laptop and there it is warts and all. within 10 mins of the postman arriving I had saved all the important data off the drive. The unit is neatness itself and I will be investing in another drive for it soonish to create a permanent drive that I can carry some films/music around on. It even comes with a soft pouch for exactly that siuation.Excellent item and astounding value for money as far as Im concerned.

Bought two of these to recycle a couple of laptop drives as temporary backup solutions (until a new server or at least tape drive is put in place), and they're working brilliantly. Just pop the case open and carefully insert your IDE drive, then carefully snap closed; no tools required. The fit is, as others have said, snug - but to my mind this is an advantage: the drive isn't rattling around in the enclosure. I'm plugging the drive into a server and leaving it on top to back up overnight (actual backup time is around an hour) and they seem quite cool the next morning.The drives come with a fake leather case and mine both had a large "LUPO" logo emblazoned across the top.Well worth the money.