Startech.com 3.5" eSATA USB 2.0 to IDE SATA External Hard Drive Enclosure - Black - UNI3510U2EB

I received the item very timely from Buy.com. I installed a 1.5 TB hard drive into the enclosure. The assembly is done without any screws or secure fasteners. The hard drive/fan assembly is held in the outer casing by one, very small plastic tab. Unless it is seated perfectly your hard drive/fan assembly will slip out of the enclosure shell and hit the floor/ground. That is the first piece of bad engineering. If the single plastic tab should break off you are unable to fasten the hard drive assembly into the enclosure. However, now comes the problem I consider a killer. The hard drive is connected into the assembly with only one interface connection, either ESATA or USB - not both! If you use the ESATA interface to download data quickly and then upload to a machine with ESATA, there is no problem. However, download with ESATA and upload with USB requires you to disassemble the enclosure, change the connections to the hard drive, and then reassemble it again. I have three other devices with USB/ESATA connections; an external hard drive, a docking station, and an external hard drive enclosure made by a different company. All three function as USB or ESATA by just plugging in the proper interface cable. An external hard drive is supposed to be portable. Dual interface is supposed to be dual. Startech saved a few cents but engineered this device poorly.
 
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Enclosure is well made. Case is made of aluminum which I like. No tools needed to open the case or install the drive. Also like the cooling fan on the side of the unit.
 
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Although I have just gotten this enclosure - less than 24 hours after ordering using Free Delivery - the ide drive fit nicely, nice screw-less interface, no pinched cables, nice quiet fan - seems like a quality item. Drivers native to xp and vista (2000, Mac OS 9.x/10.x and Linux Kernel 2.4.1. and above) per instruction manual. Mini Disk with 98 drivers and Backup software. Very pleased. Now, just have to get the failing hard drive working. The power button turns the fan off - it seems to light up more brightly green when accessing the hard drive.
 
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I checked out a lot of external hard drive cases and this StarTech was a very good price - especially since it includes a heat fan - and was very easy to assemble (not tools necessary). I took an external hard drive that I could not access because the power supply didn't work anymore. Now I can access the drive with this new case. Also, it includes cables for both IDE and SATA drives. You can't beat it !
 
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Received my StarTech Hard Drive enclosure and it worked flawlessly. It was easy to put together and is very handsome. I just installed Windows 7 this week and this product works very will with the new operating system.
 
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I just installed a WD Caviar Black 750GB in this enclosure and so far everything seems to work fine, however of course I can't say how reliable this box is since it's only been a few minutes! The build quality seems good, and personally I like having a fan although it does make some noise (way more than the drive, which is surprisingly quiet for a so-called high-performance model). The ability to use an IDE drive is nice although I doubt I will ever use this capability. What surprises me is that nobody has mentioned two things I found: first, this is not what I would call a true "dual-interface" for SATA drives. You must decide whether to use USB2 or eSATA, then switch a cable inside the enclosure between two terminals. I have another external USB2/eSATA enclosure and both connectors are available- not at the same time obviously, but you don't have to open the enclosure and switch anything; just choose the connection you want, plug your cable in and go. The other thing I found is that the instructions for setting the correct terminals are backwards! Initially I could not see my drive using eSATA. I plugged the internal cable into what the directions said was the USB2 terminal and now everything is working. (BTW: a previous reviewer said "the power button does not turn the unit off. It appears to simply prevent access to the drive. But the drive, fan, and blue light on the button all remain on." On my unit, the power switch does turn everything off. There is another pushbutton next to the power switch which I presume is for the "one-touch backup", although this feature is not described at all in the instructions).
 
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It took me just 15 minutes reading the installation instruction and placing in an 1.5TB WD Green HDD to its default eSATA connection. These are the steps to get it work with my new DirecTV DVR HR23-700: - Unplug the power cable from the DirecTV DVR - Connect the eSATA cable to this enclosure & the DirecTV DVR - Turn on the Power of this enclosure before plugging in the power cord into the DirecTV DVR - Turn on the DirecTV DVR. A message "Reformatting drive... Please wait..." appears after the DirecTV logo Step 1 of 2: Checking Satellite..." shows up. However, the DRV's internal 500GB HDD is disabled, but now I have increased the recording capacity to 3X. Hallelujah!
 
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This is a great piece of equipment, excellent quality for a great value. The fan doesn't run too quiet (does not have a fan speed control) but its very powerful and gets the job done. Inside this external enclosure you will find sold and hefty parts which are very durable. The installation is a breeze since there is no unscrewing and screwing, just plain and simple "place and snap". I was actually very surprised to see that this ext. enclosure was rather smaller than i expected for a 3.5" + internal fan. Also, contradicting another review, there is a HDD activity light which is shared with the green power light. Overall excellent product, I would definitely recommend it.
 
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The enclosure appears to work perfectly fine, but watch out: you cannot connect an IDE hard drive and expect to use eSATA. You can only use USB 2.0 with IDE hard drives.
 
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The tool-less installation is great and is very easy to change drives. Very easy and simple to set up. Changing drives from IDE to Sata is also very simple. You just have to swap a cable for from SATA to IDE/ATA is you want to use USB instead of SATA. The cooling fan is pretty quite. The only issue that I can see is that there is no disk activity light. The blue light on the case is just for turning the init on and off and does not show disk activity.
 
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This enclosure stays cool, is quiet, and is built very solidly. Easy to do a quick drive change. Watch out for the jumper settings you need to make inside the enclosure (this means you have to actually read the instructions for 1 minute).
 
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Tool-less installation. Easy to swap drives. If you swap from IDE to Sata, then you have to swap a cable for the power supply as well as the drive cable. Even that is not difficult. The power button does not turn the unit off. It appears to simply prevent access to the drive. But the drive, fan, and blue light on the button all remain on. Luckily, it is pretty quite. I bought this to use with a DVD player that has an USB input. The DVD instructions claimed that it only works with flash drives. However, I got it to work by formatting the drive in FAT32, using partitions less than 32 gb. Each partition shows as a separate folder.
 
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The whole setup is first class, data cables for sata and pata inside unit, power cables for both 4-pin and a SATA power adapter. USB cable if you need to move data to a non-esata computer. Base holder allows tucking unit in tight area and fan prevents overheating of drive. New and older drives will feel at home in this case although pata units will be a bit tighter with adapting cables inside. I wanted this as a backup solution and wanted the fan in case I forgot to shut the unit off. I won't forget that it's running, the fan is a steady whirring little bugger. It's not a big deal for me because of the situation of my setup but if it was an office where I met clients, the fan would be too loud.
 
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Computers > Hard Drives > Enclosures