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Coolgear’s 2.5-inch SATA to USB Hard Drive Enclosure

Jul 21, 2006 at 1:01pm in Hardware, Reviews

Like many people who own a MacBook, I upgraded the hard drive myself. It was cheaper to do it myself, and I could purchase my MacBook at an Apple Store instead of having to order a custom one online. Doing it this way also left me with the stock hard drive, which I figured I would drop in an enclosure and use for backup purposes. However, that wasn’t as easy as I thought. Since the MacBook uses a 2.5″ SATA drive, a fairly new drive format in the PC world, 2.5″ SATA enclosures are few and far between. That didn’t leave me with many options, but after searching long and hard I finally settled on Coolgear’s 2.5″ SATA to USB Mini Drive Enclosure.

The Cooldrive Kit

Coolgear’s enclosure is about the cheapest you’ll find at the moment. However, that doesn’t mean it’s crappy. The enclosure comes with a carrying bag, a screw driver for installation, its special USB cable, and a driver disk for older Windows computers. The enclosure looks very sleek also. The combination of aluminum and plastic gives it style, and makes the enclosure feel very solid.

I know, I know. You don’t care about how it looks; you want to know how it works. Well, installation was fairly easy. You can probably figure it out without the instructions, but I read over them just to make sure I didn’t screw something up. To install a drive in the enclosure, you just slide the aluminum cover off, slide your drive in, flip it over and screw it down, cover it back up with the aluminum cover, and screw the cover down with a screw.

Installation Steps

Alright, it wasn’t that easy. I did run into a few trouble spots. First of all, there is an inconsistency with the instructions. The instructions tell you that the cover screw should already be screwed in when you receive it. Instead it was in the bag with the rest of the screws. While that sounds like it’s no big deal, it does matter a little. The cover screw differs from other screws very slightly, so you won’t catch the difference until you’re trying to screw the drive down and the screw isn’t working. It’s a minor inconvenience, so be sure to look for the screw which is slightly different from the rest.

The other problem I encountered was getting the drive to fit. There are two small plastic pegs on the inside of the enclosure, which are meant to stop you from pushing the drive in too far. Well, I pushed the drive in as far as those plastic pegs would let me, and when I went to put the cover on, it wouldn’t close completely. It was close, but there was maybe a millimeter left before the cover would be completely shut.

Looking at my hard drive closer, it appeared that the pegs were meant to allow the drive to go a little further into the enclosure. Unfortunately the Seagate drive that ships with the MacBook has a small piece of plastic on the one side, thus preventing the drive from going all the way in. After trying to force it to go that little extra space, the one peg broke. It’s no big deal, since the peg really only serves as a guideline, but it’s something to keep in mind. I’m not sure if it’s the enclosure’s fault or my drive, but one of them definitely has a minor design flaw.

Completed EnclosureAfter dealing with the minor installation issues, I sealed the drive up. Once the assembly was complete, I just plugged the enclosure into my MacBook, and my drive was instantly recognized. Now there is something you should know about plugging it in. You’ll notice the included USB cable has two plugs on it. The extra plug (the red one) provides additional power to the drive if needed. If you’re using a 7200 RPM drive or a more power hungry 5400 RPM drive, you’ll want to plug in the additional USB cable. My 5400 RPM Seagate was able to work fine with one plug, but other drives may require more juice. If using an extra USB port is a problem, the enclosure does have a spot to plug in a 5V power plug, but you’ll need to find a suitable plug yourself.

Overall, I’m very satisfied with this enclosure. While there were some minor problems with the installation, the assembled unit performed as expected, and just looks great also. If you’re in the market for something to enclosure your MacBook or laptop SATA hard drive in, this is the enclosure to get.

16 Comments

  1. 1 chris rhee on Jul 21, 2006 at 2:24 pm:

    I was thinking about upgrading my MacBook drive in the future — I’ll have to check out this enclosure.

  2. 2 Shawn Grimes on Jul 21, 2006 at 5:09 pm:

    Thanks for the information on this. I will most likely be upgrading my HD in the near future in my MacBook and was thinking on looking for a decent price enclosure to use for the old one. You saved me some google time =]

  3. 3 Mike on Aug 23, 2006 at 9:22 pm:

    Could you point us to which drive you replaced your MacBook’s stock HD with?

  4. 4 Ronald Heft on Aug 23, 2006 at 9:28 pm:

    Sure, I bought a Hitachi Travelstar 5K100. So far no complaints. I never hear it, and it seems to perform very well. I would highly recommend it, especially since it’s about $25 less than when I bought it.

  5. 5 Mike on Aug 23, 2006 at 10:29 pm:

    Thanks

  6. 6 Mike on Aug 23, 2006 at 10:30 pm:

    Sorry, another question: Do you know if non-stock drives still work with the whole “stop the drive head when I detect I’m falling” mechanism that Apple puts in its laptops?

  7. 7 Ronald Heft on Aug 23, 2006 at 10:34 pm:

    Yes they do.

  8. 8 Timmy on Sep 8, 2006 at 4:01 pm:

    How were you able to back up the Macbook HDD to the external one??

  9. 9 Ronald Heft on Sep 8, 2006 at 11:07 pm:

    I use SuperDuper!

  10. 10 Roberto Albanesi - Milan, Italy on Jan 26, 2007 at 10:38 am:

    I’d like to buy one enclosure. Tell me how.

    thanks

  11. 11 Ronald Heft on Jan 26, 2007 at 10:41 am:

    Just visit this URL:
    http://www.usbgear.com/computer_cable_details.cfm?sku=SS-CGS-25K1&cats=131&catid=2345%2C315%2C170%2C131%2C161

  12. 12 jay on Jan 29, 2007 at 1:01 pm:

    Did you have to use an external power adapter or did you double up power from the additional USB plug? I’ve got a stock 60gb Toshiba drive that I’d like to use but would prefer not to have to plug in another AC adapter.

  13. 13 Ronald Heft on Jan 29, 2007 at 1:22 pm:

    You don’t need any external power. For most drives you can use just the data USB plug without issue. However, if the drive is slow you can plug in the addition power USB plug (on the same cable) for an extra power boost.

  14. 14 Varun Thakkar on Jan 31, 2007 at 12:51 am:

    Hey Dude !

    Very happy to see that how easily your 2.5″ SATA is working with an enclosure in Mac. Mine is windows. Same hard drive but my enclosure is not able to read it and shows my 40 GB Hard Drive as 0.0 KB which freaks me out coz its 22 GB filled.

    I would be heartly pleased if any one can drop me an email on how to fix it.

    Thanks heaps.

    Varun.

  15. 15 Phil on Feb 10, 2007 at 9:13 pm:

    Just curious … what make/model drive did you install in the case? I replaced a 60GB Apple/Fujitsu and bought a USB 2.0 to SATA Enclosure from Cubeternet. Apparently uses same chipset as yours. Had similar probs fitting it into case (even breaking one of the plastic tabs).
    MY PROBLEM IS THIS: I had to use a combination of TechToolPro, DiskWarrior, Disk Utility, and repair permissions to finally get the drive to mount. I then sold it to a friend to use as a mirror/backup for his G3 iBook. First he had to reformat it on his G4 since he’s running OSX 10.3.9. He then was able to mount it and copy SuperDuper to the drive from the G4.
    He then mounted it on the iBook, but as soon as he selected SuperDuper to transfer it onto the iBook from the new external, the iBook froze.
    Upon restart, the external is not recognized by either his G4 or his iBook.

    Sorry about the long explanation, but any ideas?

    Thanks!

  16. 16 james schlefer on Aug 25, 2008 at 3:20 pm:

    I bought this device and it immediately caught fire and damaged my computer. When I returned it, I was told I was at fault for putting it in the wrong way and they wouldn’t refund my money. (The instructions are in very poor english and the descriptive images are poor quality so it is possible.) The customer service was nasty, unapologetic, and unprofessional. I don’t recommend doing business with them.

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