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

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.

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.

Packaging didn’t include screws or the screwdriver. Pre drilled holes are too small of HDD standard machine screws. Had to drill larger holes in aluminum case and starter holes in plastic end cap for machine screws since the pre drilled case holes (only 2) didn’t align with existing HDD screw holes at the HDD’s 4 corners. Other 2 case holes are used to catch the back end cap’s plastic catch tabs and appear not useable for screwing case to HDD.

this worked great for an old IDE 40 pin hard drive I had

I had an old laptop and I wanted to upgrade the HDD, so for recovering old files from the HDD, I bought this device and it worked perfectly, I was able to recover my files from this old laptop. Highly recommend this to anyone who want to recover files using a very old IDE HDD.

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.

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

Good price and quality for giving new life to a spare HDD. I highly recommend this product and vendor.