Filed under: Accessories, Hardware, Peripherals, Odds and ends
A house for your homeless 2.5" SATA drive
Are you wondering what to do with the 2.5" SATA drive that you yanked out of your MacBook or Mac mini so you could replace it with a SATA Solid State Drive? For $19.99, the OWC Express USB 2.0 bus-powered enclosure provides a new home for that old drive so you can use it as a backup or spare drive.The Express enclosure is just slightly larger than an iPhone at 3.07" x 5.12" x .55" (78mm x 130mm x 14mm), and weighs just 2 ounces (56g) empty. Just toss in your old 2.5" SATA drive and you have a bus-powered USB 2.0 drive that easily fits in your pocket. You can also shop around for new bare SATA drives; a 500GB, 5400 RPM drive can be had for as low as US$97 (I'm sure you can find them for less!), making for a low-cost and portable backup solution.
There are other similar USB 2.0 enclosures out there; MacAlly's PHR-250A (US$19) and StarTech SAT2510U2 Infosafe (US$17.96) are about the same size and weight as the Express, while the Vantec NexStar SX NST-285S2-BK (US$22.02) and Sabrent EC-UST25 (US$14.97) are larger and heavier.
What's your favorite use for disk drives that you've pulled out of your Macs? Leave a comment below.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Just Cause said 12:28PM on 5-19-2009
Trans Intl. Firewire, USB, eSATA
http://www.transintl.com/store/category.cfm?Category=2643
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Chris said 8:31PM on 5-19-2009
$99 for that enclosure!! Now that is ridiculous!
Justin said 12:30PM on 5-19-2009
I love my MacAlly PHR-S250CC - it's a firewire and USB 2.5" SATA enclosure. My only concern is that I have a 320GB Hard drive in it - and you must supply extra power to spin up the drive when using USB. My original 100GB drive didn't have that problem. On the firewire port - it works no problem. MacAlly does supply the USB to DC-in cable with the kit. The enclosure is on newegg.com for only $35.00
Justin
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Ryan Trevisol said 12:45PM on 5-19-2009
And in a related note, the one linked in the post is an IDE (Icky Device, Ewww) version.
Darren said 8:32PM on 7-11-2009
Justin- I have the same enclosure with a 500gb Seagate 7200.4 Momentus- boots with no external power! Try using it with a 3-6" USB cable. That may make a difference with your power issue. Also, depending upon your computer- I have a MBP 2.16, and the USB port next to the firewire 400 port has more power. Hope that works.
CBZKT! said 12:35PM on 5-19-2009
$20?! You're overpaying, I went to ebay and got one for $5. Use it for my macbook's old 120 GB drive
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Roberto said 1:05PM on 5-19-2009
A blog post for an external USB enclosure? These things were cool and new in 2001, not today.
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Roberto said 1:08PM on 5-19-2009
Besides, the best deal is to buy an external HDD of the biggest capacity you can afford, then swap drives with your laptop. No homeless HDD.
Rich said 1:08PM on 5-19-2009
I found a new home for my ex-MacbookPro 100GB drive inside my 40GB PlayStation3 - very simple to do and I'm really pleased with the 60GB increased capacity now that I have PlayTV!
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Stephen Lang said 3:10PM on 5-19-2009
Isn't that a little bit large to use as an enclosure?
noza said 1:30PM on 5-19-2009
Finally, a case that's aesthetically pleasing but not horribly overpriced. Most of the dirt-cheap enclosures on NewEgg, etc are just plain butt-ugly and usually have a giant logo of a weirdly-named Chinese company you've never heard of that made it.
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Ryan Trevisol said 1:32PM on 5-19-2009
My thoughts exactly. I think I have a SATA 60gb drive sitting in my desk at home. If so, I'm getting one of these for it.
ianlive said 1:36PM on 5-19-2009
+1 Fry. Couldn't agree more. Though I am
dissapointed that my Mercury Elite 2.5" from OWC broke down three months past the one year warranty and their tech support said "tough luck".
frogbat said 2:09PM on 5-19-2009
i ended up with a spare 80gb one after i upgraded my macbook and i now have a 60gb lying about after my first ps3 went poof thanks to a lightning strike
i bought a usb enclosure for the 80gb and will soon buy one for the 60gb even if just to give to my dad - its a good way to recycle and i find them faster than my usb pen.
fortunately unless you need lots of connectivity or functionality you can opt for a generic enclosure which will work perfectly well with macs
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jcg said 5:23PM on 5-19-2009
Crucial has an enclosure for SSDs that also works for 2.5" SATA drives:
http://www.crucial.com/store/partspecs.aspx?IMODULE=CTsk01 (its under SSD in the top menu). it has a double headed USB cable in case you need the extra power, a carrying case, and a drive bay kit that you can install in your PC so you can dock it instead of using the USB. $30
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Actionable Mango said 3:25PM on 5-19-2009
The big problem with the USB-powered units is that they require 2 USB ports from a short y-cable. My Macbook Pro has 2 USB ports... one on each side of the laptop. Useless!!!
Firewire all the way, baby.
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Stephen Lang said 3:11PM on 5-19-2009
No, most USB 2.5 enclosures only need the single USB connection for both data and power.
I guess thisTUAW post was meant for you. ;-)
JD said 4:02PM on 5-19-2009
@Stephen Lang
Actually, most MacBooks have underpowered USB ports, and can't run a USB-powered drive through only one port. Interestingly, though, I just discovered that the MacBook Air is quite able to, because its USB port has been over-powered to be able to run that external DVD drive.
As for the enclosure question, I just did exactly this, swapping my MacBook 60GB hard drive for 500GB. But it just didn't seem worth while to spend even $10 on an enclosure for it, when I can buy a 1TB drive for $100. I already have a series of older hard drives of exponentially decreasing size, and usually all but the most recent add up to less than 10% of the newest model.
Actionable Mango said 4:43PM on 5-19-2009
@Stephen Lang
I don't know where you are getting your "most only need one port" information from. Obviously not this article, because every single one of the devices linked to in this article either provide a Y-cable or have a second, power jack to USB cable. Look them up at Newegg, where the pictures and descriptions are more complete.
The no-name one I bought came with a Y-cable although the online description only stated that it came with a USB cable. I've tried to use it with only one leg plugged in and it doesn't work on my Mini nor my Macbook Pro.
Chris said 8:29PM on 5-19-2009
Yes you have to be careful when going with a USB bus powered HDD enclosure. It requires and low power SATA HDD.
I pulled the 160 GB out of my 2.33GHz 17" MBP and put it in one of these and it didn't work because the internal drive required more power than the single USB connection would allow.
And using 2 USB ports for one drive is just dumb. Firewire is more expensive but you'll never have these kinds of problems.