OWC - Mercury On-The-Go Pro 2.5" Portable USB 3.0 Enclosure for SATA NoteBook HDs

I can remember how excited I was to get my first OWC clear enclosure kit. The year was 2001, I was living in Australia, and shipping things from the USA – at that time – was quite an exercise. I'm glad to see they still make great products, with proper chipsets. This case has a heat sink so if you're still into spinning metal then it will help it stay cool. The blue power and activity light is not intrusive. The clear case is pretty cool too. Drives are easy to install; putting the cover over the ports is the fiddly bit (and even fiddlier to remove).

I had a spare SSD and I wanted it to be visible inside a transparent case. I thought it would look more interesting than the usual black or silver boxes.This SSD case is quite large but feels solid and substantial. It seems to transfer data very quickly and has been reliable.As most SSDs appear to be designed for inside cases or enclosures, making them look trick and special is probably not a usual requirement. But, you can't blame this transparent case if the SSD you put inside doesn't look very special.

I have several of these enclosures, and overall they are quite nice. The shell is polycarbonate, and the 'heatsink' is anodized aluminum, which is a nice touch. It is hard to say how effective the heatsink is overall, but it does draw out a noticeable amount of heat, especially when writing large files.The good: - Quality materials - Durable polycarbonate shell holds up well under day-to-day use - USB 3.1 gen 1 is fast (more than fast enough for ANY HDD. may bottleneck SSD's, but not by much) - Compatible with drives up to 12.5mmThe bad: - A little more expensive than other enclosures - I little bulkier than other enclosuresOverall, this is an excellent enclosure that is easy to recommend. You would be hard pressed to find anything better at this price.

Other World Computing (OWC) products are always high quality, and easy to use. This drive enclosure is no exception. It’s beautiful crystal clear case allows you to see your drive as well as its components. This model uses a USB 3.0 connector for high speed transfers, and the cable they include is shielded as well as high quality. The drive also includes a nice carrying case for portable use. All you need to add is your own 2.5” SATA drive and you have a great storage solution that is pretty and reliable.

This has worked well for me. I use it with a Toshiba PC-L200 drive. Note that it can get quite warm if under heavy use AND without proper ventilation. I primarily use it on a desk in a nook on the desk and bought a cheap small USB external computer fan to create airflow in that area of the desk and it solved the temp issues.Also, I noticed it is best practice to click the enclosure’s power switch to OFF after the drive is ejected from the computer, then turn it to ON when ready to use. I had some hard drive issues, and believe it’s because I was leaving the enclosure power switch in the ON position all the time. The issues were not noticeable when using the drive, but my hard drive health software (DriveDX for Mac) was telling me to reformat. Once I started switching it to OFF when done with it there’s been no issues, and the hard drive was not harmed.

Crashed my computer. My best guess, the weak power connector (super small and wiggely).Since I have returned it, all is fine here. The speed was above 400MB/s. The return was kind of stressful.

This external drive case is the top-of-the-line product at a middle-of-line price.As I almost always use existing drives, these cases are easy to load, hold the drive well, hold the cable well,and the carrying case that arrives with the case is excellent for storage and transportation.