USB 2.0 DRIVE ENCLOSURE

Rating:
Summary: Works great, assembly of case slightly difficult
Review: I bought this drive enclosure because I recently experienced a motherboard crash in an older desktop PC. While the hard disk was perfectly good, I wanted to be able to access to my old files from my laptop without the expense of buying another motherboard (or worse, another machine). Belkin's USB 2.0 Drive Enclosure was the perfect solution for my needs.

Installation of the drive itself was a breeze. No drivers were required for my Windows XP laptop. My laptop only has USB 1.1 ports, but the product still works fine. This enclosure fits both 3.5" and 5.25" hard disks. The only reason I give this product 4/5 stars is because installing the plastic side panels requires a bit of trial and error.

Note that Belkin now has a USB 2.0 + Firewire version. I plan to buy a couple more of these enclosures for my other drives, but I'll get the version with Firewire support in order to plan for my next laptop. ;)

Rating:
Summary: easy intall on Windows 2000 & XP
Review: The Belkin drive enclosure includes an ac power adapter and has a fan built in. I had it assembled and running minutes after it was delivered.

If you can read and have a small phillips screw driver you can do this! Those familliar with computer components won't even need the enclosed instructions. The only difficult part is placing the front panel; that piece is a little tough to line up making hard drive instalation slightly more difficult than CD drives.

I'm using two of these, 1 contains a DVD writer the other a maxtor hard-drive, after initial formating of the hard-drive both function as plug and play external USB devices, and between them turn my Inspiron 8200 into a true desktop replacement. If I can just find a USB 2.0 PCMCIA card I'm happy with life will be blissful.

The speed is amazing, nearly as fast as an internal drive when attached to a USB 2.0 port. plugged into my 1.1 port it takes about an hour to backup 4GB on the hard drive and seems to write at about a 4X speed on the DVD-RW (slow yes, but it beats the tape backup I was using at work before)

+'s
plug and play on newer windows systems, driver disk also included.
Very easy to assemble - the top and bottom just sit ontop of eachother, but are held in place by snap on side pannels.
Sleek silver color design with black side panels is attractive and matches most computer systems, as an added bonus it dosen't stink like most metalic coloured plastic does when it's new.
Holes in bottom of case line up with many drive shapes and sizes.
Rubber feet & included fan result in stackable high speed access to a variety of external devices.
Saved hundreds buying internal instead of external components.

-'s
difficult to take apart should you need to once it is assembled, snap on side pannels are tough to remove without breaking.
Minor inaccuracies in instruction booklet, some information about XP systems inaccutate.

Rating:
Summary: Works perfect
Review: This is replacing a major retailer's generic house-brand USB 2.0 drive (the one that's all aluminum) housing that did NOT work at all.

This worked like a charm. The drive installed easy. The only suggestion would be to put tabs on the upper and lower portions of the case, so it lines up better, and do something about those side panels.

For Windows XP, I didn't need to load drivers at all.