Features:

  • Super speed USB 3. 0 connections up to 5 Gaps ; Built-in ASM1153E chipset supports SATA III with up to 6Gbps Signal bandwidth at for extra fast backups ; Support UASP targeted at SSD
  • Suitable Windows XP/Vista/7/8/8. 1/10, Linux/Android, Mac OS 10. 3 and higher. Support all standard 2. 5/3. 5 inch SATA I/II/III drives (up to 10TB Max); backwards compatible with USB 2. 0/1. 1 connections
  • Internal layer of smooth and slip resistant PU Leather, protection against Scratches
  • The durable aluminum-alloy material promises ultra-light portability and exquisite craftsmanship; featured with highly effective heat dissipation; non-slipping rubber pads on all four corners
  • Plug and play; hot-swap, no reboot or additional drivers are needed; 12V/2a power adapter provides stable power supply
Inateck Aluminum USB 3.0 Hard Disk Drive Enclosure

After sitting in storage for a month, my wife's AIO computer would not start up. There was a lot of much needed data she needed to retreive, including pictures and video. After removing its 500GB hard drive, I looked for my hard drive enclosure but of course, after moving, I could not find it. Having read the reviews on this enclosure and many others, I decided to go with this one. After receiving this, following the exact directions for simple assembly, I was up and running with the hard drive and enclosure in less than 10 minutes. It contains all hardware, including extra screws, non-slip pads, USB cable and power cord. Simply install the hard drive per instruction, plug in both the USB and power cables, turn on the power on the enclosure and you're set to go. I've had this 500GB hard drive running for more than 24 hours and it has not run hot at all. The enclosure is well vented and even with a 10 year old hard drive, it's super quiet. The specs say that it will run up to a 10TB hard drive, hot swap, plug and play, etc. I have a couple other hard drives to play from notebooks and desktops. We'll see how well it works on all of these and I may need to adjust this review. So far, I am very pleased with this and may turn it into a NAS.

Great Xbox one drive enclosure

I use two with the xbox one, one has a 2.5 500GB ssd which i only keep 1-2 of my current games on, the second has a 3.5 3TB drive for long term storage. I leave the internal dedicated to run the xbox OS. The xbox runs SO MUCH FASTER NOW. Using any external will speed up your xbox but an SSD will really make it peppy. I've also noticed how much quicker the Xbox dashboard runs now that it isnt switching between loading the game and running the xbox Using a 7200 rpm 3.5 drive in this enclosure also will increase speed and could be cheaper per Tb than some premade 2.5 usb drives you can buy at the store. I also like that the enclosure has an ac power adapter and isnt putting any strain on the xbox, this also has the benefit of speeding up the drive. anecdotally, ive seen 30 sec speed increases in load times vs using internal drives. Only negative, the power adapter on one of the drives died about 6 months later, enclosure still good, I contacted anateck and the sent me a whole new enclosure and everything! Im about to buy a new power adapter for a few bucks and have another drive!

Worked perfectly for drive cloning comp repair purposes!

I'm a computer repair tech, so when clients call me saying their comp died and they want to get info off of it or they want to replace their slow HDD with a fast SSD, I need something that will fill both needs! I didn't want to have to worry about having two different enclosures for 2.5" vs. 3.5" drives either, so I hunted carefully for a few days for something that would meet all that, never mind be easy to use and not take up too much space! Finally, I found this one, and after weighing my options one more time (I'm very thorough and a perfectionist, haha), I ordered! It came quickly, and while the edge with the status lights seemed to have gotten a tiny bit bent in transit, it was a snap to use to clone my friend's old HDD to a new SSD! I was so excited to use it! It took about an hour and a half to transfer the OS and her programs (she had no files of her own on it, but the HDD was an ancient 5400 RPM drive in an even more ancient comp, so not surprising - that was actually much QUICKER than I was expecting, haha!), and once I swapped the drives, everything booted and came right back up like nothing had changed at all! It was awesome! Booting takes only a few seconds (was almost two minutes before!), and shutting down takes two seconds! It's great! Some things, like internet, still take several seconds to load, but like I said, this system is ANCIENT, the CPU even more so, so we weren't expecting miracles, haha! For what we wanted, it's the perfect transfer/backup drive, and I can't thank Inateck enough! I will highly recommend this enclosure to my fellow repair techs if they ever have need of one!

(updated 3/12) First one faulty, replacement worked for a few months then failed, replaced again, works!

A warning if your drive is already formatted and has data: On OS X the drive was not readable when first plugged in, it was an already formatted hard drive, had to erase and start over again, so this could be an issue if you have sensitive data on your hard drive already. Speeds are great though, my old WD My Book case was only USB 2, so it would max out at 30MB/s, with this it has both read and write of 110MB/s Update: 10/4: Contacted Inateck and they sent me a new one, it doesn't have any issues that the original one did. Works great, drive didn't need formatting and no random disconnections, great speed. Western Digital 2TB Green drive. Update: 3/7/2016 The replacement they sent has failed now. It will mount but as soon as you start transferring data to it the drive shuts down and power cycles disconnecting the drive mid transfer. Have tried it with multiple hard drives, same thing happens. Update: 3/14/2016 Inatek contacted me last week and offered to send a new replacement. Received it pretty quickly and was back up and running. Still no idea what happened with the old one.

This enclosure worked really good. I was only able to test it with ...

Bought this to pull stuff off of old hard drives that I wanted to check on or dispose of. This enclosure worked really good. I was only able to test it with 3.5 inch drives but it states that it should work with the 2.5 in laptop drives. Both 3.5 and 2.5 SATA drives use the same power and data connectors side by side so I can see that the laptop drive would slide right in just like the 3.5in drive. Windows 10 detected the drive fairly quickly and was also ejected fairly fast. Enclosure felt well made and sturdy and I think looks great. Not too bulky at all. Connections in the back of the unit felt sturdy as well. Since I was swapping in multiple drives I didn't secure the case closed with the screws. If you are using this for just one drive or moving it around make sure you screw everything in to keep drive secure. Unit will fall apart if not screwed together. Nice thing is that a screwdriver is included so no need to search around for one. Would buy another one I had the need to have another permanently external hard drive.

Good Quality for the Price

**IMPORTANT**: Drive enclosures are not totally "plug and play" like a USB flash drive. Upon the first time connecting it to your PC, you might have to do a couple simple steps to have the PC recognize the new drive. First try openning Windows Disk Manager (In Windows 10, just type "Disk Management" in the search box on the toolbar and the new drive/enclosure should be listed for you to then properly format it so Windows will recognize it in a "plug and play" manner in the future. If it isn't listed in the Disk Manager, you'll have to open the Device Manager (again, search via the Windows 10 toolbar) and once opened, scroll down to "Universal Bus Controllers", expand the list, then right click on "Intel USB 3.0 eXtensible Host Controller" and choose "uninstall device" from the dropdown menu. Then restart your PC and 99% of the time the new drive/enclosure will then be listed on the Disk Manager. This is what I had to do myself. I thought I should make people aware of this since most (like one of the reviews here) people will assume that it'll be instantly recognizable, and if not, that their drive or enclosure is malfunctioning, which isn't the case. Remember, there's something called "Google" where you can search "USB 3.0 enclosure not recognized by Windows 10" and find the answers you need in seconds which I always strongly recommend prior to unfairly giving this or any product a bad review I chose this Inateck enclosure due to the fact that it's powered and I'd be connecting it to my Microsoft Surface Pro 3 which have underpowered USB ports; meaning that drive enclosures, external drives and other devices completely dependent on being bus powered from the USB port can be problematic. Also by being a powered enclosure, there's the option of using it to house a 3.5" Hard Drive (spinning platter; HDD) which require significantly more power than an SSD. There's also the fact that I intend to use this Inateck drive enclosure in a predominantly sedentary application on my desk as opposed to a more mobile use. Another factor in choosing this enclosure is its use of the Asmedia ASM1153E chipset to convert from SATAIII to USB 3.0 as it features UASP (USB Attached SCSI Protocol) which allows for faster final transfers over USB 3.0. Also, Asmedia Chipsets tend to be less problematic, more robust and longer lasting than competing options like the JMicron JMS567 SATA-to-USB bridge Chipset found in cheaper enclosures; afterall, when it comes to USB 3.0/3.1/3.1 Gen 2 controllers for computer motherboards, nearly every manufacturer (e.g. Asus, Gigabyte, etc) use Asmedia controllers and that says a lot. One of, if not the biggest priority with respect to an enclosure for myself, is data transfer speed; I want an enclosure that allows for the fastest possible connection as I intended to use a high quality SSD with MLC NAND flash and an enclosure that'd bottleneck the SSD would just be wasting the drive's potential. You can see from my picture that I benchmarked the enclosure with a brand new, never before used, Samsung 860 EVO 500GB SSD and it achieved nearly 450MB/sec reads and 420MB/sec writes which is completely satisfying as those speeds are approaching the limits of the USB 3.0 connection (5 gigabits per second or 625MB/sec before factoring in "overhead"). With a 6Gbps SATAIII connection to a motherboard, the Samsung 860 EVO will reach 550MB/sec sequential reads and 530MB/sec sequential writes, so the fact that the Inateck enclosure is achieving 450MB/sec over the USB 3.0 bus with 1 Gbps less bandwidth is impressive. The enclosure itself seems durable enough with the housing made of brushed aluminum. The USB 3.0 cable and power adapter cable included are heavy gauge (thick; included a Bic lighter in photos for size reference) and are definitely much better than a cheap usb data cable that comes with most phone chargers. The back I/O fascia/plate is fastened with two screws (an additional two screws are included as extras) and is definitely secure. There are also two indicator LEDs on the I/O fascia for "power" and "data" which is helpful for troubleshooting. It also includes four smaller, zinc plated (silver) screws to mount the drive to the tray, but the thread diameter on them was slightly too large to fit in the female threads on my Samsung 860 EVO SSD so I'm assuming they're intended for a 3.5" hard drive. This is fine however, as the SATA data and power connector that is inserted in the drive secures a small, light SSD perfectly fine by itself. Included with the accessories in addition to the screws are two extra adhesive rubber feet and a small phillips head screwdriver (in photos) (probably size #0) for the included screws which is definitely a nice touch. I use (and benchmarked) the enclosure connected DIRECTLY to my Microsoft Surface Pro 3 USB 3.0 port, so I cannot comment on what may happen when connected through a USB hub or similar device. I have a cheap Tecknet USB 3.0 3x USB port and Gigabit LAN port hub that I attempted to connect the enclosure through, but for some reason I did not care to ascertain, the Computer would not recognize the enclosure/drive through the hub. I should mention however, that months prior to this, for some reason, the Gigabit port on the hub ceased to function so perhaps the hub itself is to blame. For the price, I feel as though this is about the best USB 3.0 enclosure on Amazon for those that intend to use it in a mostly stationary application. There are much smaller (about the size of an iPod or wallet) and cheaper, bus powered (draws its power directly from the USB port rather than an AC to DC adapter/charger) enclosures specifically for SSDs on Amazon, but most of these use lower quality chipsets like those from Jmicron, are made from far less durable plastic. Also, they are limited to using SSDs, while this Inateck enclosure offers the option to use a 3.5" hard drive which is a nice feature as eventually I intend to use the Samsung 860 EVO SSD in a new PC I am building and will therefor most likely use this enclosure with a large capacity 3.5" hard drive (8+TB) to backup and store seldom used files. The external power supply is also a nice feature as contrary to what many people believe, all USB 3.0 ports are not identical with the amount of power supplied by the port varying greatly as with the USB port on my Surface Pro 3 which is low power. The Inateck enclosure however, is still small enough to be easily portable and will most likely fit in the vast majority of laptop bags, booksbags, and even smaller purses. It's aesthetically simple and pleasing and will fit in with most people's computer "space" (unless you're an Apple fanboy, then you'd probably have to paint it white or something and double the price, haha). I will return to update my review after a month of use and probably again after 6 months to comment on long term durability

Solid and Fast Enclosure...

I bought this drive after returning another one with a plastic casing. The metal casing is great and reduces internal disk drive (DD) temperatures by about 4-5 degrees long term. The drive is fast and recognized right away and enables the DD to transmit its data at its fastest rate. Using HD Pro, I saw my new 6TB Western Digital RED drive starting out at 190 MBytes/sec on its outer tracks and finishing at a rate of about 140 MBytes/sec in its inner tracks. The metal cover was somewhat hot, which is GOOD for its doing its job of transferring heat from the DD to the outside air. Plastic enclosures like my previous one are barely warm to the touch, yet the internal DD temperatures are rather high, close to their manufacturer specified safe limits. Your standard newer DD will NEVER saturate the USB3.0 speed of 5Gb/s. Typical new DD transfer at rates under 2.5Gb/s which translates into 250 MBytes/sec. Your drive will be the limiting factor...unless it's an SSD drive which exceeds the USB3.0 5Gb/s data rate. In that case, get a USB3.1 enclosure which can handle up to 10GB/s but these aren't as available as much as they need to be. One negative thing is the front end PCB and its faceplate are wobbly and flimsy when you try to hold on to them to insert your drive. Just be careful during DD insertion. Overall, it has a solid feel to the enclosure making you feel good about the rigidity and toughness. Highly recommended!!!

Simple and easy

I needed an external drive enclosure for my backup 2.5" hdd. I originally bought a cheap Orico enclosure, but it wasn't powerful enough to run my drive (it didn't have an external power source, USB only), so I returned it. After looking at several other enclosures, I chose this one because it had good reviews and seemed fairly sturdy. Now that I have tried it out, I am impressed at how simple it was to set this up. I just plugged in my drive, screwed on the front plate to the enclosure, plugged it in, turned it on, and my OS picked up the drive without a hitch. I like the fact that I can plug in either 2.5" or 3.5" drives, for future compatibility. Although light, the enclosure is metal and has some nice rubber feet to help reduce vibration from spinning drives. It seems like it should hold up pretty well.

The Best There Is !!!

This is the first of what I expect to be several more of these enclosures; I have already ordered a second one. I got this to hold a drive that I rescued from an old dead computer that had been out of use for several years. Everything seems to be well built and thoughtfully designed. I like that twice as many screws and a complete extra set of rubber vibration/anti-skid pads plus a decent screw-driver are included; very thoughtful in a day and age when one is more likely to be missing all the necessary parts, rather than getting a complete set of spares. So far, this has been completely plug-n-play. It has remained plugged in and left ON for days and seems to take care of itself. I have thus far used it only for transferring/storing a big collection of 5-GB+ video files and it seems to handle them as quickly as one would expect. I have not measured read/write speeds scientifically, but it seems to be plenty quick enough. I expect this to last a long time; time and use will tell; if it fails prematurely, I will be sure to relay that information. This is a far better choice for an external hard-drive rather than the more common USB-powered 2.5" sealed purpose-built external drives. Having it's own dedicated power supply, this is a lot faster and more dependable than even the best of the USB-powered drives. Update 18-Dec-2018: Five of these in use and it would be hard to convince me to buy a different brand or model. I am fixing to buy several more. The only way these could be better was for the switch to be on the opposite end from the cables; thus, the unit could be turned around with the cables in back and switch in front. Update 07-Jan-2019: I just received another of these to add to my fleet of several. I had one of my older units apart and it's screws laying on the mousepad. I wanted to install a HDD in this just-arrived enclosure, so as to put it through it's paces before the 30-day return window expired. Rather than open the little included zip-lock bag of screws, I just started to use the screws from the older unit; that is when I ran into an unwelcome surprise; the older screws would not fit this brand-new unit. On examination, I found the new units screws to be about half the diameter of the screws that fit the older units. I find this to be an unnecessary annoyance and a step backwards in the quality of these units. The older screws were plenty small enough, while these tiny new screws look like threaded needles; I can see it being very easy to strip the threads or snap one off inside the hole. I put a big label on the new unit that will alert me to the fact that it uses a different screw size than all the rest of them.

Comparison of Inateck and Orico enclosures

I recently upgraded the drives in my Synology NAS, and wanted to put the old WD Red drives in enclosures to use them as backup drives. I researched a few of the enclosures on Amazon and ended up purchasing both the Inateck and Orico enclosures. Both enclosures are well made and function well. I'm going to highlight differences in their basic features in this review. Hopefully this will help a few people that are deciding between these units. The Orico enclosure is made of molded plastic and is extremely easy to setup without using any tools. Iinstalling the drive and closing the case is easily done in seconds. The Inateck enclosure is made of aluminum and requires a small screw driver (provided) to screw the drive into a tray that slides into the enclosure and then screw the enclosure closed. Installing the drive and closing the case probably takes a minute or two. To me, the aluminum Inateck enclosure looks/feels nicer. The Orico enclosure appears similar to a WD Elements portable hard drive, which certainly isn't bad. The Inateck enclosure has a few slots in the end to vent heat, the Orico does not. The power and USB cords for the Inateck appear to be higher quality than those for the Orico. The power switch on the Inateck is a rocker switch. The power switch on the Orico is a push-button switch. If the power cuts off with the push-button switch, the drive will remain off until you push the button to turn it on again. I prefer the rocker switch. At the time of this review, the cost of the Inateck was $7 more than the Orico. I feel that both units are a good value.

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