X-MEDIA XM-EN3451 3.5-Inch USB 2.0 IDE/PATA or SATA Aluminum Hard Disk Drive HDD External Enclosure Case, Support 3.5" IDE/PATA(Parallel ATA), 3.5" SATA(Serial ATA)/SSD Hard Disk Drive

Why did you pick this product vs others?:I needed an external drive case for an old hard drive, so I could have a USB drive for local backups.This case works great, fits the hard drive perfectly, and is plug and play.Price was good and I'm happy with the purchase.

We purchased this to access the data from a 20 year old IDE hard drive that was used for Windows 98. The build is somewhat cheap, but it works for us. It took a few minutes for our newer laptop to recognize the drive after we hooked it up, but once it was recognized we were able to transfer files without a problem. Bear in mind, on an older hard drive with a USB 2.0 connection, the process is the little slow. That being said, it got the job done. There are not a lot of economical choices for accessing old drives and it was good to find something we could use. Very satisfied.

works as advertised. the included USB cable was faulty and the source of a lot of IO errors. When I replaced the cable with a different cable it started working fine.

Problem powering up. All cords fit but no powers to unit.

I needed a new external hard drive case. WOW!!! What a great find!!! Priced right. Well constructed, almost a custom fit. It might be the only 3.5" IDE, 3.5" SATA/SSD Hard Disk Drive case around made of aluminum. Everything else is plastic. Its best feature is that it's plug n' play. I didn't lose a gigabyte of data in transition. I could access all my files on my new laptop running Windows 11 via the 2.0 USB cable provided. 3 different IDE connections are included as well as the necessary hardware. And, a little Philip's head screw driver, too. You have to be somewhat handy, but it was easy to make the change over from my old case to the new case. If I had another 3.5" IDE SATA/SSD hard drive that needed a new case, I would buy this cases in a heart beat.

I bought two of these drives. The X-MEDIA XM-EN3451 3.5-Inch USB 2.0 IDE SATA Aluminum Hard Drive HDD External Enclosure is versatile. It comes with everything that you need to set it up IDE, SATA, and more. And it is easy. Open the case, make the connections, and you are done. That was enough to make me happy, BUT it's not the whole story.I wanted to purchase an accessory that came with another drive, not the one I bought so I contacted X-MEDIA Support Services. The response was immediate, on a Sunday! I was astonished. The support person said that he would check as soon as he returned to the office on Monday and get back to me. He did. He found a part I wanted, and shipped two out the same day.It is rare to get after-purchase support service from a tech company. X-MEDIA is 5 star!

It works and has connections for both SATA and IDE, so it gets one star for that. The outer aluminum shell is since, so it gets one star for that. But otherwise this is a piece of garbage. Cheap plastic insert that the circuit board will not stay attached to. Very poor design. Definitely returning it and looking for a better quality option. I don't think I would keep it even if it were only $10.

I purchased this to install an old internal IDE Iomega ZIP drive into. I had used the ZIP drive with an old CompUSA enclosure I had lying around. That enclosure had to be open to use the drive. I wanted a new enclosure that could be easily modified (ie - cut the front off) so I could have this ZIP drive (mostly) sealed up in a USB enclosure and still have access to the Disk Slot and Eject button. Unfortunately, the CompUSA enclosure would have been too difficult to modify for this and it was being used with an old HDD so I went with this X-Media enclosure.The ZIP drive did not work with this. I tried it with the jumper off and with it in the Master, Slave and Cable Select Locations. I tried several USB ports (2.0 & 3.0) on my PC. I could see the enclosure pop up in windows Device Manager so I knew the computer saw it. However, when I put a disk in the drive, it would just spin up and never show up in File Explorer like it did in the CompUSA enclosure. After all these failures, I thought maybe there was an issue with a cable or the circuit board, so I installed an IDE HDD. That seemed to work fine. It powered up and appeared almost immediately in File Explorer. It was at this point I figured there was just a compatibility issue with the ZIP drive.Now let me say this... I was a dummy and cut the front of this enclosure off before I tested it with the ZIP drive so I can’t return it. Otherwise, I would have. As a side note, I was able to cut the front off of the drive tray using only an X-acto blade and I didn’t have to pull out the Dremmel. However, that shows you the type of plastic used for the tray. It is a fairly soft white plastic. But once mounted in the aluminum outer shell, everything was solid.Finally... This is a small enclosure. Just barely large enough to hold the HDD and connect the cables. Once I started installing the Zip drive, I saw that it would be sticking a good 3/8” out of the front of the enclosure. Not a big deal if it worked. Additionally, the screw holes on the bottom of the enclosure did not align with the holes on the bottom of the drive. If I was able to get this to work, I would have needed to drill holes to mount the drive. The holes in the HDD drive do align well enough to use out of the box. As others have noted in their reviews, because the enclosure is small, the connecting cables are fairly tight between the drive and the circuit board. The cables need to be installed onto your drive prior to installing it in the enclosure.All in all, it’s an OK enclosure. It’s nice that it can work with older IDE drives or newer SATA drives. I just wish it worked the way I had hoped it would with the ZIP drive. I took one star off because of the tightness and the cheap tray and one star off because it didn’t play nice with my ZIP drive.