Comments: very small enclosure. pretty well built. Front and back pieces are plastic with cheesy silver paint. comes with a little case which is nice and barely can fit the firewire cable. The only issue I've had is that when my aluminum powerbook isn't plugged in (running off battery) the firewire drive won't mount. The apple system prfiler says the enclosure uses the Prolific PL3507 chipset.

Pros: Great portability with excellent bang for the buck quality components. Partitioned/used (3) different HDD’s, 7.2K got the outer alum case warmish (this is a good thing), yet kept the drive below 37C on heavy read/writes. Both 7.2 and 5.2K drives need the power boost (USB external to USB or round dedicated power in receptacle). The Power boost cables work great with either USB or IEEE FW type A equally well. 4.2K old Fujitsu can power up and do heavy duty use with USB (single) and FW (6 pin only) on a high end MoBo/PS, but not on both my portables and supposedly high-end Dell (go figure). The included cables are nice and short with (2) 12” FW 6 to 4 & 6 to 6 std pin; (1) USB power (round) & (1) 12” USB std to mini w/9” std USB power only plug. The std power only USB plug will charge any RAZ phones and MP3 devices W/O connecting to PC (data). Excellent transfers under FW (faster) and USB. No CCR errors on both fat32 and NTFS under XP sp2.

Cons: Non for me. If you need longer cables you’ll need to order ‘em separately. If you can’t screw delicately using the Very handy supplied #0 phillips driver (along with 2 extra screws, sweet!) stick with 3.5” ;-) No matching SATA internal version. (Grasping here)

Overall Review: Most laptops will not power HDD, even when plugged in to AC. This is a limit of the inverter to power requirements. Same can be said for brand name PC’s as they limit the amp out-put on USB’s due to cost and heat. It’s sad that folk’s blame this great enclosure because OEM’s are loose on the USB specs. Although FW has lower bandwidth, it is slightly faster than a well tuned USB port due to overhead. Some USB powered hub’s also have issues with certain components due to sub standard PS (wall plug transformers) or manufacturing defects. YMMV

Pros: -Small, durable -comes with all required cables, carrying pouch and screwdriver

Cons: -front and back pieces are plastic -may have to use two adaptors for some computers

Overall Review: I got this in March because I have an older Sony VAIO that was giving me problems and thinking it might be the hard drive, I ordered a new drive and this unit so that I could quickly transfer any necessary files (the drive wasn't dead or clicking). Newegg, as always was fast with the shipping. The enclosure is easy to install, though I'll agree with others that the end pieces are plastic and seem flimsy in comparison to the alluminum body and I was impressed that with the packaging/included accessories. My VAIO had firewire but only USB 2.0 via a PCMCIA card so I had to use the included AC-USB adaptor to power the drive and the transfer was quick and effecient. It ended up being more than just the HD on the VAIO, but on the brightside, I now have a 120 GB portable HD that I use with my new MacBook.

Pros: Works good right from the box. All needed cables included.

Cons: Very short (12") firewire cables, almost unusable. USB cable longer. But if you need to use other USB port as power supply for drive-included cable is 12" long as well (unuseble). My drive needed additional power supply (other USB port) when connected to USB. When connected to firewire no additonal power was not necessery.

Overall Review: Good enclosure, short cables.

Pros: Small, simple, seems to keep drive cool.

Cons: None I've seen.

Overall Review: Came home to find the hard drive in my laptop making horrible noises. Shut it down, tried to reboot the next morning, no luck. Figured it was toast. No big loss, but three days of emails and photos weren't backed up. Then I started reading about how to get drives to work long enough to recover data. First rule: don't try to boot from the drive. Second rule: keep the drive very cool. So I bought this aluminum enclosure, inserted the bad drive, put a powerful fan on it, took a deep breath, and connected to my desktop. Not only could I grab the important stuff, I was able to do a full backup, only a couple of files not recovered. So this enclosure was worth every penny, just for that. Plus I have a nice portable drive now.

Pros: I have been using this with my Hitachi Travelstar 80GB hard drive for over a year with no problems whatsoever! Although, the USB 2.0 interface is used most of the time, I have had the opportunity to use the Firewire interface a few times with equal success...

Cons: NONE!

Pros: Good enclosure with a solid build. USB and Firewire works with older macs

Cons: I have gone through two of these enclosures and both time while they were plugged into a Mac G5 computer system the firewire gets overloaded and burns up. The hard drive is fine but the firewire connection is gone and all you can smell is the burnt circuitry. On older macs I never had this problem but G5's are death to these enclosures.

Pros: very small, looks good, I got the combo version and both fw and usb connections work. I formatted it FAT32 so it can be seen by my windows and mac machines. I like the carrying case and the variety of cables it ships with. Price was great for a unit like this.

Cons: I was very frustrated to learn that this unit will not get power from the fw plug. This means you MUST have a mini-usb cable to plug into the drive in order to use it. This defeats the purpose of getting a 2.5 combo drive! I still have to carry cables around with me. If I wanted to carry 2 cables around with me I would have gotten a larger 3.5 drive for a lot less. Also mine was shipped without the small screwdriver. The mounting screws are very tiny, even my smallest driver didnt work I had to go buy one. Also, unlike other 2.5 enclosures I've owned, this one mounts the drive without rubber grommets, so vibration and shock are more of a risk to this unit. I also wish the unit accepted a full size usb cable connection, mini-usb cables aren't the most common thing. The unit does have full size and mini fw however. On some machines the usb does not provide enough juice to run the drive unless you remove any other usb device on other plugs. The unit has an ac adapter power plug jack b

Overall Review: My preferred transfer method is firewire since it is so much faster. This drive is better suited for USB.