UGREEN Hard Drive Enclosure, USB 3.0 to SATA HDD Caddy for 2.5 3.5 inch SSD HDD Disk up to 16TB with DC Power Adapter, Tool-free Lay-Flat Hard Drive Docking Station for Windows Linux macOS, PS4, Xbox

Product Information

I also have a couple Orico drives with fans, but those are just overkill and mostly for show. They do work, just big and require tools to swap drives.

The AC1405 supports USB 3.2 Gen1. Together with UASP (USB Attached SCSI-Protocol) support the transfer speed of data will be at a maximum rate up to 5Gbps. The hard disk enclosure is provided with a USB 3.2 Gen1 cable. The Sabrent EC-USASP has an on / off switch, something you won’t find on most SSD enclosures but a nice convenience if you want to leave it plugged in but only power it on when you need it. Most 2.5-inch SATA enclosures have USB 3.0 micro B as their output port and come with USB Type-A to micro B cables. However, the EC-USASP has a USB 3 Type-A port (5 Gbps) and comes with a Type-A to Type-A cable. So, if you are planning to connect the enclosure to a laptop that has only Type-C ports, you can use a USB Type-A to Type-C cable (something many people have lying around the house) to do so. It does matter what size the drive is. Large 3.5" hard drives require more power then what even two USB ports can provide. For reference, a single USB port can provide a maximum 500 mA of current. A Western Digital WD3200AAJS, on the other hand, requires 1444 mA at idle, and 1608 mA when reading/writing files to/from the drive. It is part of the USB specification that if a device attempts to draw too much power, it is simply disconnected from the target system - this is why, while your adapter itself shows up, you can't access the drive. There is no jumper setting to change, SATA drives don't have any.Installing a 3.5 inch hard disk is very easy thanks to the screwless mounting design of the AC1405. Open the enclosure and connect the hard disk to the SATA connector and finally close the enclosure. The AC1405 is now ready to connect to your notebook or computer with the included USB cable. The enclosed power adapter provides the required power for your hard disk. Which form factor? You have to get an SSD enclosure that matches the physical size of your drive. If you have a 2.5-inch hard drive or SSD, get a 2.5-inch SATA enclosure. For a 3.5-inch hard drive, you’ll need a 3.5-inch SATA enclosure. M.2 SSDs require M.2 enclosures, but be careful if your SSD is shorter than the standard 2280 (80mm size); most but not all enclosures have mounting screws for the shorter sizes. Also, if you plan to use an M.2 SATA SSD, as opposed to an NVMe one, make sure that the enclosure supports that standard instead (or in addition), because most M.2 enclosures are NVMe only. The Orico’s M2PV-C3’s design is less polarizing than that of the SSK SHE-C325, but it actually uses cheaper materials, as the top panel is ridged aluminum but the sides and bottom are ABS plastic.

So you would have an enclosure which doesn't always work which would make customers unhappy, review scores low and support costs high. This is a no go. If we assume that the case for a 3.5" HDD must have room for 12 volts at 1 amp for the drive then that right there takes 12 watts. Then comes the 5 volt supply which might take 1/2 an amp, 2.5 watts. Then the interface board will need power. That's cutting it close even if the people engineering the case know that there will be 15 watts available. There’s also a small, built-in battery that provides 5-10 seconds (depending on which model you get) of service time in the event of a power failure. That brief window of time might be enough to allow the drive to finish writing some data and avoid corrupting your drive in the event of an ill-timed unplugging. To install our drive in this enclosure, we first had to remove the aluminum panel, which is attached with a tiny, 5-point star screw rather than a normal Philips head type. The enclosure comes with a small star-shaped screwdriver, but we lost it and had to go digging through our iFixit kit to find an appropriate head. USB C PD 2.0 dropped mandatory 12V (and PD 1.0 is a paper only standard) and made that voltage optional. So our theoretical enclosure would only work with certain power supplies which is annoying and it's not possible for the end user to easily tell from the wattage alone. For eg. I have a non-spec compliant laptop which requires 12V 2.5A over USB C to charge and it's a major annoyance to figure out which 30W power banks can supply it. PD 3.0 introduced PPS which would be another source of 12V but again some chargers implement it and some don't.If you want an SSD enclosure with some RGB bling and a swanky sci-fi design, Asus’s ROG Strix Arion is for you. The M.2 NVMe enclosure has two RGB lights, an illuminated ROG logo on the top and a small plastic fin on the side. These show a pleasing pink and purplish light show which Asus markets as being part of its “Aura Sync” RGB ecosystem. However, there doesn’t seem to be any way to actually control the lights as the Asus Armoury Crate software we tested with did not recognize the drive. The all-aluminum chassis has ridges to help with heat dissipation and it comes with both a thermal pad you can put on top of your SSD to keep it cool under prolonged loads. It’s a rather attractive silver enclosure that has a small cutout / handle area you can use for threading through a carabiner.