Insignia™ - 2.5" Serial ATA Hard Drive Enclosure - Black

I'm an IT professional and have recently purchased four 2.5 inch drive enclosures. I install spare ssd drives in them and use them to transfer data. They are larger than a flash drive, but on large copies of small files, an ssd drive in an enclosure can operate about 2 orders of magnitude faster. I tested this drive by writing 272,000 files totaling 149GB. Through a USB 2.0 port, I got about 28MB/sec beginning with large files, then a drop in speed on the small files. I stopped and switched to a USB 3.0 connection which gave me about 260MB/sec on the large files. So that's OK, about 10 times faster. On the small files = about 270,000 at a few k each, I got about 225 files/second, say 15-20 MB/second. On a thumb drive, writing just 10,000 small files to a single folder might go at may 2-5 files/second. So, bottom line, performance is fine and appears on par with the best name-brand and off-brand USB 3.0 enclosures I've used. Price was about $15.00 less than the most expensive one and a few dollars more than the cheapest. Build quality is fine. Case is aluminum. USB 3.0 cable included. I'm quite satisfied with this device. Of course, to avoid the folder indexing issues with thousands of files, It's all ways faster to zip entire folders, then transfer them as single files. Working like that, this type of product is a game changer as it really let's high-speed USB shine. This Insignia enclosure has worked out fine for me so far. Highly recommended based on my experience with it.

Great for moving data during PC Upgrades. It is a simple way to Plug n Play an old drive with data on it into a new machine. Just remove the drive from an older laptop, insert into the enclosure, attach the cover and plug into a USB port. Once the data is migrated, the disk can be cleared and the drive can later be used to replace flash-drives. I plan on replacing the original spin-drive the enclose was obtained for, with a Solid State Drive so as to become my replacement for mobile data storage and backups; so data loss due to physical damage is reduced. The metal enclose is the perfect protection for a spin-drive, but one can never be too safe when it comes to mobile data storage. My only wish (a minor one) is that the drive light (a blue LED) would be on the opposite end then the USB Cable port. That way the drive would rest on a desk or table with the cables to the rear and give the ability to see the drive access LED when the need arises. I examined the circuit board prior to using the enclosure and understood the reasons that INSIGHT places the LED and USB port on the same side, it was just a matter of simple assembly for a user. Having a LED on the other end would require leads and wires to the end-cap at the other end of the enclose. This minor LED placement in no way distracts from the true function and purpose of the enclose and is just a personal preference of mine since I like my USB cables to be neat and tidy even when remote. For simplicity and ease of setup --- this one is perfect. It truly is Plug and Play.

After an incident with a kid and laptop, my laptop, screen, processor, etc. was destroyed. I had over 15 years of work, research, photos, etc on the computer and some on external drive. I was able to gut my laptop, remove 3T hard drive and purchase this device. Due to age, and size of my drive, I was skeptical of performance. To my surprise, not only did it work, access my data, but allowed me to now have a 3T external drive for my new Surface Pro. It was so simple, I was scared... Simply remove 2 screws with the provided screwdriver, snap in harddrive, and plug into USB, and bam... It also has a power indicator on front to let you know it's working or available. The unit itself, is small, rounded edges, and slick. Almost as if you had purchased an external drive for use. This was such a great purchase and performed so well, I bought 2 more for future use.

Using to access my old laptop drive, laptop had failed. Works fine. It comes with all items necessary to hold a 2.5" HDD or SSD. You only have to access the connection end of the unit with the included screwdriver. The other end cap has a foam pad to secure the drive in place, I did remove this end during the installation which allowed me to center my drive within the enclosure, then put it back on. The foam has some compression to it which allows the enclosure to securely hold the HDD in place, this should provide some protection from shock. The unit comes with a USB 3.0 cable but I did purchase a longer cable to allow more versatility in the location on my desk. I am using Vista 64, once plugged in the computer recognized and assigned a drive letter (lowest available letter). I used the manage computer on my PC to change the drive letter. I have multiple USB drives on my desk and I use a mail sorter to hold my drives, this enclosure is thin enough that it fits in a sorter slot.

It seems to work well, it is well-built, and has tightly-fitting components. I'm not sure if the USB-SATA interface has some bugs or if it is an issue with the hard drive I have loaded into it (the original 2.5" 5400 rpm drive from my work laptop, cloned and replaced with a Samsung SSD, still holding OS install from the laptop). I'm giving it 4 instead of 5 stars because it gives me intermittent issues, sometimes not showing up as a drive, that I cannot uncover the source of. When it works, it works flawlessly - which makes me think it is something with the drive still containing an OS install, with boot sector and all. This enclosure is a cheap way to get a portable/external USB 3.0 SSD - compared to the price of a purpose built portable SSD drive.

But after using it for about 3-5 minutes it would "unexpectedly eject". I have a brand new Macbook Pro and wanted to import data from my old Macbook Pro drive. The drive would stay active for about 3-5 minutes, then I would get a message that the external drive experienced an "unexpected ejection". It appeared that it didn't have enough power to keep the drive going. I tried it in the other USB port and it did the same thing. I find it hard to believe the port's are weak in power. I will try a different brand enclosure; if it does the same thing I will get a device that is self powered. I never had trouble with the drive while it was in the old computer, so I don't believe it could be the drive.

This enclosure is well made, with complete compatibility with a range of drives with Serial ATA. I use it for a large capacity SSD and it performs as expected. The design is simple and I appreciate that the screws fit flushly on assembly. (many other aftermarket enclosures I've used have fallen short of this) My only knock on this drive, and this is more of a Best Buy (Insignia is a Best Buy owned brand) issue, is that it is priced a bit steeply for what it is. Many other competitors charge less than $20 for a comparable enclosure you can find at stores like MicroCenter. There is only one of those stores in the area and it is not convenient to me, so I paid extra for convenience.

I was nervous about trying this product, but it was very simple to assemble and use for data storage and retrieval. My windows laptop stopped working and after diagnosis by the Geek squad was determine that while repairing the laptop was not a financially beneficial choice, the hard drive was still in tact and salvageable. I purchased this product, installed the salvaged hard drive from the laptop and all my data was saved and now accessible thanks to this product. The only downside was that the computer I purchased to replace the broken windows computer is a Mac and so saved programs on the hard drive do not work on the mac , however, pictures, files, and documents are accessible and usable on the Mac from the windows hard drive installed in this product.