JacobsParts 2.5" USB 2.0 IDE/PATA Hard Drive Enclosure Case

Second purchase from Jacobsparts. As I retired some older laptops I have been able to reuse the IDE/PATA drives as external (portable) drives formatted as FAT32. First purchased in May of 2018; now recently in October 2020. Solid construction and fairly easy to assemble. There are some issues to be aware of; no included instructions, but once you plug in the drive it can only slide into the case one of two ways.It appears that the case is not perfectly symmetrical; so if the holes don't line up, turn it around. The screws are tiny, and the included (in my case) screwdriver is mildly magnetic. The dual USB 2.0 power/data cable is handy; especially when used with some laptops. The vinyl slipcase did not excite me. I used my recent purchase for a 40GB drive removed from a "vintage" IBM Thinkpad (R51). Partitioned, formatted and named with Windows 7 disk manager; and tested with Windows 10 and Linux. Your experience may be different. Cheap enough to share quantities of documents and photos with family and friends.

It works fine but absolutely no instructions.

I ordered two at the same time for two drives. These DO work as advertised, contrary to some other reviews. The connection is for IDE drives, which are missing a pin in the spot where there is no hole punched on the connector.I like the fact that each came with an extra screw because I lost one from each of the cases. I also like the extra usb cable for more power, although I was able to mount my drives and traverse their file systems just fine with only one plugged in.Time will tell if I will continue to be impressed with these, but for now, I am.I use them on Linux Mint 20.1, btw. The file systems are locked with luks, which Windows is oblivious to, so neither of these showed up on my windows laptop, but that's likely because of the file systems on the drives, not the product. I plan on wiping one and making exfat, which should mount on Windows, so I'll update review if that does not work.

I've had this for 6 years now and the drive still works. I don't use the drive every day, it is mostly for backing up family photos and videos, but I am very pleased with the product. It was easy to put together and went right to work. If they still make it the same as they did when I bought mine I would recommend it!

Sweet little enclosure.Metal one piece case that I like over the more expensive multi part cases.Worked right away with no hassles.The included "leather" carry case is embarrassing.It should be sold without the leather case and would still be a good deal.Pull the hard drives out of old laptops and throw them in one of these for a nice external drive.

Spouse had an old laptop that had died, but wanted to get photos and files from hard drive. Worked like a charm and we are using this as a storage case, just in case we missed something they would want to pull from it later.

This item does not fit my drive. Not sure what type of drive it is meant for the holes are not all punched

Perfect for what I needed. Well worth the price. Would recommend to anyone that needs portable external drive.