2.5in Enclosure - Externals
On now to the 2.5" Hard Disk Drive Enclosure from Ultra. It's amazing how knocking an inch off the width of the hard drive can reduce the size of the enclosure so much, some of the reasons for which we'll explore shortly, but first let's take a look at the enclosure.
Unlike the 3.5" enclosure, this enclosure only supports USB 2.0. It does however come with two different case covers - one black, the other blue, one of which you can see in the above shot
Bundled with the drive you get the aforementioned extra casing, plus a nice leather-like case to carry it around in. We have the obligatory screws, with power and data cables finishing off the bundle.
The enclosure isn't much wider, or indeed all that much longer, than the type of hard drive it's designed to contain, making it significantly smaller and more portable than a 3.5" enclosure. There are a few reasons for this, the difference in drive dimensions being the all too obvious ones. As we've already said, this enclosure is USB2.0 only, which means less circuitry required.
Speaking of circuitry, 2.5" hard drives can run from the maximum current provided over USB at 5 volts - 500mA. This means there's no external power brick needed, and thus no extra baggage internal or external to the device. Laptop drives tend to run cooler than their desktop counterparts, so cooling becomes less of an issue. Top this all off with the fact that 2.5" drives are designed to be lugged around in laptops, and you'll find they're more durable. All of these points make a 2.5" drive a more appealing solution than lugging a 3.5" enclosure around. What we must remember, however, is that we sacrifice capacity for portability.
