Pros: Works
Only needs USB power for my drive, not two cables (unlike what some reviewers would suggest is the case)

Cons: Relatively cheap design
Not a perfect fit inside enclosure (designed for thicker optical drives)
Faceplate has cheap plastic that bends when trying to connect to front of drive, had to use another spare from Vantec
Optical Drive conversion kit extremely cheap - no cover of PCB or shock protection

Other Thoughts: The enclosure is two individual pieces of plastic sandwiched together on top and bottom. If you even remotely try to apply pressure to your optical drive in an attempt to make a connection onto the backplane where the SATA interface is, it will start to separate like the warm ends of an ice cream sandwich. It requires careful alignment, which is also an issue. While my optical drive is fitting into the enclosure after some effort, the only way it fits is literally sideways. It doesn't sit on the bottom internally, nor the top.....sideways....leaving awkward gaps either way. The plastic faceplate that you mount to interface with the drive is also horrible, the clips that insert onto the face of the ODD are misaligned, leading to laughably easy bending even trying to insert ends that do meet the measurements. Mine basically broke, I had to use one from the Vantec ODD conversion kit.

It also helps to extend the USB cable before insertion as it can free up some space internally. I had initially thought that this product had the appearance of being larger due to the fact that there was a reserved space somehow in order to house the retractable USB cable...nope. Why would this thing have practical design? Crazy. Instead it just gets in the way of the drive insertion and because it shares this space, it's incredibly short.

As mentioned, I had already purchased a Vantec kit for my optical to HDD conversion on my laptop which is much, much better. That one is made of some kind of poly-carbonate ESD conscious material, comes with shock resistant screw inserts for the drive, a rubber bumper for added protection, and clips that reinforce the entire caddy inside the laptop. This on the other hand, has none of those features. The caddy is flimsy plastic, is bare/open on the bottom, and has no rubber shock insert - and a huge gap for 2.5 inch insertion leaving the drive totally able to eject with enough force off the slim SATA interface.

Pros: Very nice looking and elegant optical drive tray enclosure. Price was cheap Includes everything needed for the conversion except the tools (ie, screw drivers).

Cons: TOO LARGE for the Asus n550jk. Caddy is slightly thicker than the OEM optical making it not able to fit into the clearance of the optical slot. Quite useless in this sense.

Although it looks nice, material is made from very cheap looking plastic, probably wont dissipate any heat. You can screw in the HDD into the caddy but not sure if it is enough to keep it from vibrating or becoming loose.

Other Thoughts: Bought this for the sake of replacing my optical on my Asus n550jk laptop with an HDD for more storage as my main SDD is quite small mostly just for the OS. Wanted something that would also have a place for the optical once extracted, didn't want it to be useless.

The main problem when trying to install the caddy is that the caddy that holds the HDD is too thick to fit in the clearance of the clamp and even the connector for the optical slot. When placed on a flat surface, all parts of the caddy are slightly higher to fit into the optical drive slot. You cannot even connect it to the SATA connector. Again this is for the Asus n550jk laptop.

Since this was my main use of this, I have yet to try how the optical fits in the enclosure, I would imagine that it is too small and can potentially wobble. I also haven't tried putting on the bezel, although I have heard this may be difficult. Would not recommend this for those with same laptop.

For reference, the clearance of the caddy is about 1.3mm and the clearance for the optical is about 1.1mm. Please check your laptop before buying!

Pros: Looks good, external drive works great, comes with all necessary hardware.

Cons: Worthlessly slow optical drive connection converter, optical drive hanger made from plastic

Other Thoughts: Everything works great on it except my drive in the optical bay slot is now so slow it is essentially useless. I got this with an SSD so that I could put my old HHD in the optical slot but the data transfer rate between my old HDD and my computer is incredibly slow. With my iTunes library on my HDD the connection is so slow that the song won't play without studdering and buffering for 10+ seconds. If it wasn't so slow it would be a wonderful solution for people wanting to put a second HDD or SSD in their laptop. CAUTION make sure that your laptop does not have a slim optical drive or else this hanger will not fit.

Pros: USB Enclosure

Cons: Faceplate removal from original CD/DVD drive can be tedious.

Other Thoughts: An earlier review commented that you need to take the USB power cable with you. I do not need it. I put my CD/DVD drive in the enclosure, plug it in a 2.0 USB port, and it works. Press the button, the tray opens, and I install Microsoft Office with just the USB cable and without the additional power cable. I think it's for USB 1.0 / 1.1 ports that did not provide power. If you have USB 2 or 3, you probably won't need to use the power cord (uses another USB port).

Pros: Nice looking, no external branding, retractable USB cable, has insert for SSD.

Cons: Requires two cable connections - one for power, one for signal, expensive.

Other Thoughts: Maybe this is true of all of these enclosures, but when used to run an optical drive, it requires 2 cables. One for power, one for the signal. Even tho this case has a built-in signal cable, you still must carry around the power cable (which is included). If you forget/lose the power cable, the whole thing is not useable with just the built-in cable as it just doesn't power up Not sure if this also applies if you put an SSD in there, but i would assume so.

Also, the "retractable" cable isn't on a spool or any kind of spring loaded mechanism, it's just a short cable sticking out the back that has enough space in the case for you to mush it back in. Mush it in too far and you'll need fingernails or tweezers to get it back out. I guess for $30, i was thinking it might have some sort of more elegant system for cable retraction.

Pros: Complete conversion kit - everything is included.

Cons: Instructions are light, no mention of what a second USB 'power' cord is for, and no tips how to get the faceplate off the original ODD.

Other Thoughts: This kit has all you need to covert an Optical Disk Drive (ODD) in a laptop. It's designed for a slimline ODD bay, and it works perfectly for my Samsung NP300E4C that I added a Solid State Drive (SSD). It comes with an external enclosure for your ODD when you remove it, a slide-in cradle to add an additional Hard Disk Drive (HDD) or SSD, all the screws you might need for securing the ODD in the enclosure and HDD/SSD in the cradle, and a USB power-supply cable, which I don't need but assume it's for people using their 'new' external ODD on non-powered USB v1 or v2 ports.
It also comes with a new ODD face-plate that you replace the original with. This is necessary normally because the original face on the drive is contoured to match the shape of the side of the laptop. I could not seat the ODD in the enclosure with the original face-plate on because it was taller than the case (snagged on the bottom). But once I switched the face-plate with the included replacement, it fit perfectly, then you snap on the original face-plate to the cradle and it makes your laptop look original... as if it still has the ODD installed.
Tips: Most modern laptops' ODDs are held in place with a single small screw that should be accessible by taking off the laptop's bottom cover where you would typically access the current HDD. That screw is securing the ODD to the laptop using a 'tab' that is attached to the ODD. You must switch that tab to the new cradle. The original screw to attached the tab to the cradle wasn't long enough, but the kit comes with a longer screw just for this purpose.
And switch the face-plates before trying to insert either the ODD in the enclosure or the cradle in the laptop. They snap in place and fit perfectly (at least they do on mine).
The hardest part is getting the original faceplate off the ODD. It's not visually obvious that it's connected a 3 points to plastic on the drive... it can appear as if it's all just one piece of plastic. The 'middle' tab can be move to 'unclip' easily, but the two main side tabs are hard. Look at the new faceplate to see where the insert/tabs/clips are so you can identify them on the ODD. It's easy to get a little frustrated and want to just yank it off, but you'll probably not only ruin the faceplate, you'll also damage the ODD tray. I used an exacto-knife to carefully trim off some the plastic around the insert tab and the plastic holding it. Don't brake the tabs or trim too much because this original faceplate needs to attach to the cradle. This isn't really a con because it's not a problem with the product - it's a problem with trying to remove the faceplate on the existing ODD that wasn't ever intended. Just be patient, because once you get that off, everything else is cake. New drive works, new external DVD/CD ODD works, and laptop looks original.

Pros: This was a very easy DIY project. All you have to do is remove the DVD drive from your laptop (any modern SATA DVD drive should be universal) and replace with this caddy and a HD of your choosing. I personally used the original laptop HD as I replaced it with a SSD for faster booting; the original drive is great for storage and seldomly used applications. A nice bonus is that you get an external USB caddy for the displaced DVD drive, which looks very stylish. This doesn't reqiuire much technical skill, but make sure you have small enough screwdrivers to handle getting the access panels on your laptop off and for the hard drive/DVD screws.

Cons: Real fingerprint magnet (the DVD caddy)