Advantages: Portable, easy to use, never failed on me yet! Disadvantages: Perhaps only the disc size, but it has taken me 2 years to fill it!
Wester Digital, a respected brand name, and i agree!
I have owned the unit now for around 2 years, and have 0 problems. My internal harddrive has died on me twice but my external one, never!
This 80gb HDD is perfect for storing large files, home movies, photo albums, music etc. It's ideal when transfering data from one place to another, simply unplug it, plug it in elsehwre and hey presto!
It supports drag & drop so moving files couldn't be easier.
Standard power adpater with 3-pin plug, and USB2.0 connection to your pc, mac, server etc.
It is easily recognised by each operating system and i have yet to find one that doesn't support the unit. Plug it in, wait around 30secs and it's up and running.
Can be stored horizontally, and if you have 3 like me, you can stack them perfectly, or store them vertically ...
Advantages: Brilliant way of using spare hard drives Disadvantages: a tight fit, with little ventilation
WHY ?
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Why, you might ask, would anyone want a NEWlink USB2.0IDE & SATA HardDriveEnclosure ? And even more to the point, why would such a person buy one, admit it and then go ahead and review it?
The answer my friend, is not blowing in the wind.! It was sitting on my shelf. It was a spare 80GB harddrive, that I had taken out of my PC when I put in a larger drive.
It annoyed me that this major investment when I first built my PC was now sitting idly by, giving me no return for my money.
Neither was there much point looking to dispose of it through Exchange & Mart, Ebay or the local shop window ads - who wants a redundant harddrive ? - especially when mine is SATA.
So for a little while, I had looked for an enclosure like this, into which I could place my hard disk, plug it into my USB and have an extra ...
Advantages: Fast, high capacity storage. Well built, looks good. 2 year warranty, No fan. Disadvantages: No fan.
and certainly smaller than my other two externalharddrives by quite a margin.
The back has sockets for power, USB2.0 and an on/off switch which is also feels nice when flicked on/off, nothing half baked there. Unlike some units, this one has no fan, both a blessing and a curse. More on that later.
So, connect it to a spare USB2.0 socket on the PC, plug in the power supply and switch on...
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I used it on an XP based PC and one with Vista. In both cases it was recognised correctly as a Freecom externalharddrive and appeared as a new drive in Windows Explorer. No drivers needed, just Plug and Play, working as it should.
Due to the lack of fan, it is extremely quiet. I was very pleased to see that inside, it used a Samsung harddrive. Having used various different makes over ...
Product Information for "StarTech.com 5.25" External USB 2.0 IDE Hard Drive Enclosure" »
Manufacturer's product description
The StarTech.com external USB IDE drive case can turn any IDE drive into a portable drive. It provides a single 5.25 inch bay for IDE CD-ROM drives. 3.5 inch hard drives can be installed by using a 5.25 to 3.5 inch drive adapter bracket. The sleek looking case features an internal 5cm ball bearing cooling fan to keep the drive running cool. The super-high speed USB Version 2.0 interface provides plug and play installation for Windows 98SE/ME/2000/XP.
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