The Friendliest Computer Club in Ventura County Since 1986
External Enclosure
This is a reprint from the February 2007 issue of TOE (The Outer Edge)
By Jim Thornton
You just bought a new hard drive to replace your computer's original drive and your new one is three times larger. You needed this larger capacity drive to store all of those family and vacation photographs as well as all of the MP3 music files that you have been downloading. Now, what to do with the old drive - sell it on eBay or give it away? But wait, don't do that. Let's buy an external hard drive enclosure to mount the drive into and now you've got a great place to store your backup files and/or a portable hard drive that you can use on different computers. This is a good use for any unused drive that you have stored in the closet.
The housing of Macally PHR-100AC Firewire/USB2.0 External Enclosure is made of solid aluminum and serves to fully protect the hard drive from any external damage and has shock absorbent rubber strips on its top and bottom. The enclosure, also, is designed to be stackable, can either lay flat or with it's mounting stand on its side, and serves as a heat dissipater. This model is designed to accept any capacity 3.5 inch ATA hard drive (the standard hard drive in most computers). The enclosure is connected to the computer by either a USB (1.1 or 2.0) or firewire (IEEE 1394A) cable and there is a second firewire jack for daisy chaining. It has its own power supply so it isn't robbing power from your computer, an ON-OFF switch, and a large neon blue LED to indicate when the power is on and when data is being transferred.
The enclosure works with both PC Windows 98, Me, 2000, and XP) and Mac (OS 9.2, 10.1.5, 10.2, and 10.3) desktop and notebook computers and supports hot plug-and-play. Its physical size is 5.2 inches wide, 1.8 high, and 8.7 long, and weights 1.3 pounds. It comes with the manufacturer's one year warranty.
The enclosure comes with an installation CD, printed instructions, a vertical mounting stand, firewire cable, USB cable, and power supply. The manufacturer's website is (www.macally.com) and the manufacturer's suggested retail price is $69.00; Amazon sells it for $49. The manufacturer offers several different models -S five USB only; three USB and IEEE1394A firewire; two IEEE1394A firewire only; two USB and IEEE1394A with data encryption; one USB and IEEE1394B 800 firewire; one USB for use on a network; and one USB for copying or transferring data between a USB flash drive, card reader, MP3 player (except iPod), digital camera, hard drive, etc., all without a computer. The other major difference between the models is physical size of the hard drives (1.8, 2.5, 3.5, and 5.25 inches).
Installation is easy - (1) Remove two screws from the rear panel of the housing, remove the panel, slide the enclosure out of its housing. (2) Install four anti-shock mounts onto your hard drive, set the drive's jumper to Master, and connect the 40-pin ribbon data and four-pin power cables to the drive. (3) Slide and secure the drive into place in the open enclosure, slide the enclosure back onto its housing, replace the panel, and reinsert the two screws. (4) Plug the AC adapter into a standard electrical wall outlet and into the enclosure, and plug the USB or firewire cable into your computer and into the enclosure. (5) Your computer should immediately see the new hard drive and display a notice that it has found new hardware. Should for some reason that your computer doesn't see the new drive, the installation CD provides detailed information on how to resolve the problem.
Bottom line, I'm pleased with the concept and the way to put to good use our old but totally usable hard drives. My wife is using the enclosure on her computer to store our old 35mm family and vacation slides that she is scanning as individual JPG files.
