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I used this enclosure to house a Western Digital hard drive that I used for backups. After the installation and first backup, I only powered the unit up for backup operations (about 3 three times in 6 months). Yesterday the unit powered up okay, but my PC could not 'see' the drive and it caused the PC to freeze. By placing the hard drive in my PC, I determined that the drive was okay and the trouble must be the electronics in the enclosure.
This is a a fine, reasonably priced SATA hard drive enclosure.Installation of the hard drive is straightforward:(1) Slide out the mounting tray from the enclosure.(2) Mate the fixed SATA/power plugs on the hard drive to their partners on the mounting tray.(3) Secure the hard drive to the mounting tray with four included screws(4) Slide the tray back in most of the way(5) Attach the three-pin power/disk activity LED connector wire(6) Slide the mounting tray in the rest of the way(7) Secure the rear panel with two more screws (also included).Included in the box:-Stand for vertical placement (or it can sit horizontally on four small rubber feet).-Power cord (with the *biggest* wall wart you've ever seen).,-USB cable-Driver disk for Windows 98 (it works natively with newer versions of Windows; I checked it with machines running both XP Home and Windows 7 Professional).As with anything electronic, time will tell about its durability (but its always a good sign when they work out of the box as mine did).Why not five stars.Three things:(1) BEWARE. Surely this bulk could have been worked into the case instead, or simply made smaller.(2) The power switch is on the rear of the case. The "wall wart" for plugging this in to your AC power source is HUGE (1.25 inches thick and approximately 2.5 x 3 inches in area). Even on a power strip with wide gaps between outlets, expect to give up two outlets to accommodate this. It would be better placed in front, easily accessible to users (although the rear placement seems to be the norm for most enclosures).(3) Included instructions are silly, Ikea-like pictograms. While they are clear enough, their content will probably be obvious to those experienced with other enclosures while remaining inscrutable to technical novices.
This is a good thing since the only documentation that came with the Antec was a single sheet of illustrations.The original packing was destroyed with other Christmas paper and boxes. So HD=fine.
During file transfer there was an error. I installed a WD 1TB HD in the Antec it was recognized by my PC and I formatted it without problem.
The HD worked fine when it was installed directly in the computer, but did not work when reinstalled in the Antec. After restarting the PC and Antec, the Antec HD could not be found.
Listening closely to the enclosure verified that the HD was not spinning on power-up. Antec=FUBAR.Installing the HD was easy.
So I'm stuck with this piece of junk.Next time I'll pay a bit more for a better product.
Connected WD10EACS and WD20EADS and both HDD did not powered up (did not revved up). Both HDD work through two other adapters.Took refund and ordered Acomdata Samba 3.5-Inch USB 2.0 Enclosure. Have been using it for about 2 years and and it looks more solid though more bulky.
It was an easy process to install my extra 500 GB SATA drive. I use it to backup my laptop.
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