Ultra Mini Portable 3.5 inch Hard Drive Enclosure

Ultra Mini Portable 3.5 inch Hard Drive Enclosure
Posted :: Apr 28, 2005 by Impact

Ultra's Mini Portable 3.5" Hard Drive Enclosure sports a built-in fan, two Firewire ports, one USB port, and 5 indicator LEDs. What happens if your laptop runs out of drive space, or you need a backup solution for moving files easily from one computer to another? You can get an External Hard Drive Enclosure.

Introduction:
An external hard drive enclosure does just what the name suggests. It takes an internal hard drive, and makes it external by enclosing it in a protective, connective case. This allows a standard internal hard drive to become a portable hard drive. They work by converting an ATA hard drive connection to USB and/or Firewire.

In particular, Ultra's Mini Portable 3.5" Enclosure supports the latest USB2.0 standard as well as a Firewire connection. It has 3 ports on the back, two Firewire and one USB2.0, as well as a power switch, and a power plug. The enclosure box contains all necessary contents for setting up and using the enclosure. It has the enclosure itself, an instruction manual, an installation CD, a Firewire cable, a USB2.0 cable, a power cord, and 6 screws to physically install the hard drive into the enclosure.

Necessary Supplies for Setup:

A 3.5" (standard internal hard drive size) ATA Internal Hard Drive
Ultra's Mini Portable Disk Enclosure 3.5"
Phillips screwdriver

Ultra's 3.5" Enclosure supports ATA 133/100/66/33, thus nearly any ATA hard drive will be suitable. For testing purposes, a Western Digital 80gb 8mb Cache ATA100 Hard Drive was selected.

Installation:
Installation consists of mounting the hard drive into the enclosure, which is a relatively simple three step task. Although it is very clearly outlined in the included manual, the installation process is described below.

Step 1: Unscrew the stands (legs) from the bottom of the external hard drive enclosure. Once the screws are out, remove the stands from the enclosure and lift the sides of the it apart.

Step 2: Take the 3.5" hard drive and connect it to the IDE cable and Molex (Power) connectors. This is slightly difficult due to the size of the enclosure. Since there is a limited amount of space within the enclosure it may take a couple minutes of effort to get both the IDE cable and the Molex plugged in to the enclosure's sockets. Note that the hard drive needs to be upside down! See the image below.

Step 3: Screw the hard drive into the screw slots on the sides using the screws included in the enclosure box. Then, put the enclosure back together by snapping the sides together, putting the legs on, and screwing in the two bottom screws. It should look like the picture below.