Rosewill RX81U-ES-25A 2.5" SATA to USB 2.0 External Enclosure

Pros: Seems to function.

Cons: "Build Qualitiy" is not so good. The top and bottom extruded aluminum panels slide off to load a drive. The top was rattle-y loose and the bottom so tight I bent it trying to remove it. It seems to work though, and a hammer and block of wood solved the ill-fitting panels.

Other Thoughts: Comes with a kinda silly leatherette case (with no sides) and a double ended USB cable. It would be nice if they marked the USB plugs as data and power only, but it's not big deal. Save your money and put it toward a WD Passport or similar.

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Valued Customer,
Thank you very much for purchasing this unit.
We strive to provide the most reliable and highest quality products to our customers.

Please kindly contact the Rosewill support team
Phone: 1- 800-575-9885
Email: rma@rosewill.com

So we may assist you with (in-warranty) replacement.
We look forward to hearing from you.

Thanks,
Rosewill Customer Care

Pros: Easy to put hard drive in case.

Cons: 1. The drivers disc is a mini disc. Will not fit in Macbook pro so it is completely uselss.
2. If you copy the disc to a thumb drive and try to download it to your mac...doesn't work.
3. Rosewill customer support will not send you a disk...I'm still waiting for a response (two weeks now).
4. Rosewill does not have the drivers for this product on their website!
5. If you read the disc file from another computer it doesn't even have Mac on the disc. All it has on disc is Win98. Where are Mac drivers then? Which File do I need? Wasted about 4 hrs of my life trying to figure Rosewills product out.

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Valued Customer,
Thank you very much for purchasing this unit.
We strive to provide the most reliable and highest quality products to our customers.

This product does not come with drivers as the operating system have them built-in. What may be the problem is you need two USB 2.0 ports to allow it to fully power up. If your laptop does not have them you may need to switch to a different model that comes with a power adapter.

So we may assist you with (in-warranty) replacement.
We look forward to hearing from you.

Thanks,
Rosewill Customer Care

Pros: It's sleek and light. Screwless to open up, and assemble. Came with a very, very nice case (but with a magnetic button?? for a harddrive????). I'm using the case for my 4.3" Garmin; perfect fit!

1 super bright blue power on light, and 1 yellow activity light.

Cons: No cons, but see "Other thoughts."

Other Thoughts: Had bought it for a WD 1TB Scorpio Blue, but unfortunately, this enclosure only takes the slim HDDs WHICH IS NOT IN THE DESCRIPTION ANYWHERE! Newegg, please update! Was able to plug the drive in w/o attaching the top cover, and it worked fine. Ran it for about 15 mins and had to remove my thicker drive. Will purchase a thin drive for this enclosure.

Pros: Looks nice

Cons: Doesn't show all of the files on the drive

Other Thoughts: I tried setting this up to transfer files from an old laptop HDD to a new pc, but the drive it produces under My Computer is completely empty, aside from hidden system files.

I emailed Rosewill tech support twice over the course of 1-2 months, but still haven't received a reply. I'll be returning this soon.

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Valued Customer,

These enclosures are not designed to be used as data recovery options. Usually when you bring a hard disk from another computer it has specific volumes and partitions assigned on it which our enclosures may or may not be able to read. If you create a simple volume with 1 partition on a computer internally and then connected to our enclosure you should not have any problems. If your initial intention was to use this for data recovery then this will not work. If still not satisfied with this product and please contact us for warranty options.

Feel free to contact the Rosewill Customer Support team for further assistance at 1-800-575-9885 Monday - Friday 8AM - 5PM PST or via email at techsupport@rosewill.com

Pros: Worked out of the box with no issues.

Pretty sturdy sleak little thing for its price. I expected it to be of a more cheap/flimsy feel.

Transfer speeds are adequate.

Cons: A little difficult to slide apart. The metal on plastic is a very tight fit and I was afraid I was going to snap the plastic.

Other Thoughts: The build quality is kind of a pro and a con. It looks good and is held together well when it is all put together. but when taking it apart you can tell it is pretty cheap. At the end of the day, I would recommend it.

I purchased this because my Dish Network DVR stopped working and I needed an external hard drive to transfer my recordings from the old DVR to the new. As a warning to anyone who may be doing something similar, this item did NOT work for that purpose. My DVR receiver would not recognize it. However it has no issues when connected to my desktop or laptop pc's.

Pros: Cheap price

Came with a little carrying case and a small screwdriver

Compact

powered via USB

all standard stuff

Cons: It's easy to dig into the interior plastic frame if you screw the screws in too hard. No fans (but that's to be expected). Nothing worth dropping the rating over.

Pros: These Are really convened I use them for transferring data, to taking data with me on trips like movies and music, I also use them as hot swap drives slap any sata laptop drive in and read/write data in the matter of seconds.

Cons: The drive needs use of 2 usb ports on the computer side of the cable to supply enough power.

Pros: Beautiful external HDD enclosure. I love it, works great, no complaints.

Cons: None

Other Thoughts: I put an old macbook SATA drive in it and hooked it up to my Wii U for more storage.

Pros: Works
Minis crewdriver is adorable
External enclosure and a case for the enclosure in the package
Snug but not too snug for my old ps3 drive

Cons: Price, maybe? i think i got it on sale for 11 bucks but even still. If only the drive was an old ide;those go on sale for single digits.

Other Thoughts: Saved my old ps3 drive. Upgraded it to 500gb momentousxt and had no use for it. Over christmas i had bought my dad a laptop from here*200buck laptop, newegg offers great deals on refurbs* and he needed more space than the 80gb hdd that came with it. Figured itd do him more good than me so i set him up with it and this enclosure. He hasnt said anything bad about it, which means its doing pretty darn good.

Pros: Simple and Sturdy, comes with all hardware needed (even its own mini-screwdriver) and a travel case.

Cons: None to date

Other Thoughts: Simple enclosure to restore data from, and give current use to, an HDD from a clients dead HP Notebook.