Cable Matters Aluminum 10Gbps USB C Hard Drive Enclosure for 2.5" SSD/HDD

Actually decent speed replaced my old crap enclosure and impressed me

I bought this enclosure to use with a Crucial BX200 2.5 inch ssd and an old 2.5 inch Seagate hard drive, and the enclosure works as advertised. The enclosure is very easy to open and slot a drive into, and I have switched out multiple drives with this and all have worked. I have downloaded large files onto the Crucial ssd with no issues at a very reasonable speed. Now, I have not speed-tested this enclosure, so refer to other reviewers on that regard, but I do not believe my 2.5 inch SATA ssd can even surpass the advertised speed, so I do not believe I can even fully test this enclosure's speeds. I have also used this with a 500gb Seagate hard drive, which works great (for a hard drive, at least), and I have used this with another old hard drive as well. Included with the enclosure is a USB C to A cable and a C to C cable, both of which I have used and work well. The one complaint I have is the build quality. While the aluminum top is nice and works well for heat dissipation, the bottom plastic section has a very weak clip, and does not stay on extremely well. It stays, but a nicer clip, or a latch of some sort would be a much more elegant and functional solution. Also, most modern thin 2.5 inch drives will flop around in the enclosure if it is moved because of all the extra space in the enclosure. A very small insert is provided to aid in this regard, but once again, it is not a very elegant or practical solution and a better solution should have been provided. All things considered, these are very minor concerns, as the enclosure does its job where it counts, and has worked well in my testing. Now honestly any new ssd buyers should probably just opt for an affordable nvme ssd instead of a 2.5 inch drive as prices for nvme drives have been dropping rapidly in the past year, but for those who opt for a 2.5 inch drive, or in my case, have older 2.5 inch drives, it works excellently.

I had a $500 Crucial 2TB SSD to use as a bootable clone-backup of my MacBook Pro, but the SSD died last week. The Crucial SSD in an Inatek case would backup at a rate of about 530GB every hour for a 1.6TB backup (3 hours). I had to temporarily switch to doing partial clone-backups with my smaller 1TB Samsung 860 SSD, in a similar Inatek case (not backup iTunes media), and saw 600GB per hour while copying my 16" MacBook Pro (upgraded cpu, gpu, 32gb/2tb). So, the Samsung was slightly faster. Well, I bought this Cable Matters case with a 2TB Samsung 860, and Carbon Copy Cloner just hit 980GB copied in the first hour! Black Magic Disk Speed Test shows 485 write and 528 read, which is almost the speed of my old 2014 Mackbook Pro 15" internal SSD. I attribute the 70% speed increase over the other Samsung 860 to the Cable Matters case. On top of that, the Space Grey color is a perfect match to the color of my 16" Macbook (see pics). I have to say this case is a winner, despite being 1mm thicker than my other cases. Also, the top and side are a nice aluminum, but the plastic removable bottom for internal access is a slight letdown. The USB connection clicks in crisply with the included cable, and doesn't feel loose. The 12" cable is sturdy, but it could be a little more flexible as it's too stiff to slide the case snugly against my Macbook (see pics). I could likely fix this with softer cable, but that might slow it down.

Works fine, good speed and compatible with Linux. Does not go into sleep mode automatically as some do. Downside - bad design for activity light. The activity LED is extremely faint - not invisible in ambient room lighting - because it is a surface mount LED on the board and the light must go straight up and then make a right turn through a pinhole size activity aperture cut into the plastic. So, I modified it by adding a light pipe made from a clear pen clip (sanded and polished) glued directly to the top of the SMD LED and cut a rectangular hole in the case directly above the LED and glued the other end of the light pipe there as well. Sure my warranty is voided now, but have an indicator light that is visible in room level lighting. Additionally, the power down (or eject) function works well in Linux and the activity LED displays a slow blink when the enclosure is safe to remove. Other downside - as with so many usb drive enclosures, usb cable is really short. I use a longer quality usb cable and have not seen an impact on transfer rate or reliability compared the super short cable that came with the enclosure.

Works great, easy to mount the 2.5 ssd and plug right in with no tools. Using to store my ssd housing my Home Assistant. Plugs right in to my raspi 5 via USB 3

I've bought two of these type C enclosures and I must say, they're such a great deal that I couldn't believe there wasn't any reviews. These are my new go to enclosures that I'll be recommending to anyone needing a good, solid, stable 2.5" enclosure. I made them tool-less with thumbscrews, see photos. The thumbscrew legs are M3x6mm thumbscrews and look fantastic. The clear rubber pads were in a variety pack of assorted "bumpers" that I picked up at Walmart. Any thin silicone/rubber non-slip pads should work and these were pre-cut. The pads fit almost perfectly but I'd like to have some that are a little thinner, these are about 1.5mm thick. These drives are used around the house as DVR/PVR drives so they're not transported too much. Because of that I don't use any screws inside, they're really not needed and the thumbscrews made drive swaps a breeze. These thumbscrews also fit the MiniPro, Vantec GX and Tripp Lite type C enclosures. I noticed the price went up by $4. Edit 10/25/2018: I've now bought three and am using this last one with a 240GB OCZ 460 SSD. It's getting 445 MBs, reading from a HDD and writing to the enclosure. Read speed is just as good. It's maxing out a USB 3.0 5 Gbps port. More on this below. I have two Cable Matters USB 3.1 Gen 2 type C enclosures, a MiniPro Type C, and a MiniPro USB 3.1/eSATA combination. There are several aluminum enclosures available which are very similar in design on the inside, but have a little different outer housing. Compare the Cable Matters enclosure to the MiniPro Type C and you'll see what I mean. This one is the better design. The Cable Matters enclosure doesn't plug the hole in the drive rack so it gets much better air flow, where the MiniPro outer casing curves up to cover the air flow hole. The Cable Matters enclosure stays cooler, no doubt about it. I tested it with a SATA III WD Black 7200 RPM drive (requires 0.58 amps, more on this later). Look at illustration 2 in picture 6 of this listing and you'll see the large hole in the drive deck that I'm referring to. There is a space below the drive rack, visible from the front and back, and it gets great air flow through there. I say this is the best package deal because it not only comes with the USB 3.1 Type C cable, but also a Type A cable for older ports, and it also includes the USB power cable. No other USB C enclosure includes the power cable and many don't have the external power port at all. Many other enclosures only supply one interface cable, too, either Type A or C, but not both. With a AC to DC adapter at 5 volts, 2 amps (3.5mm tip), you have a complete drive kit that'll power the most power hungry drives you can find, drives that other enclosures choke on. Speaking of power, people plug their drives into USB 2 ports because their USB 3 ports have problems. Assuming your cables, hardware and drivers are ok, you're likely having power issues, especially if you're using a hub. A USB 2 port only supplies 500 milliamps or .5 amp (1/2 amp), and many drives require more power than that. A USB 3.0 port supplies 900 milliamps or .9 amps, and a USB 3.1 port provides 1.5 amps. Many times too little power is the problem from the start and switching to a lower power USB 2 port doesn't help at all. Don't use your USB 2 ports for your power cable, they're too low power to be of any use. My WD drive is .58 amps. Of course, I'm taking about if you're having problems, first try to make sure the drive is getting plenty of power. If you have a USB wall charger, that'll work great. Make sure it's one amp or more. Power problems also arises when you use a USB 3 hub. They also require power to function, then you plug in a keyboard and mouse etc, and you use up a lot of the 900 milliamps before you ever plug your drive in. I highly recommend a powered USB 3 hub if you're going to be using external USB 3.0 or 3.1 enclosures, or really any USB enclosures. It'll alleviate many of the problems people complain about in reviews. This isn't so much of a problem if you're aware of the power requirements of your particular hard drive, and you take steps to make sure the drive gets plenty of power. Some problems I've seen from low power issues is an error that says the drive is write protected, or it writes very slow at around 1-2 MBs etc, and frequent disconnects and just plain acting flaky. I hope these tips will make your life a little easier, at least as far as getting along with USB hard drives goes. If you read some reviews, you'll be able to spot the people with power issues very quickly. Oh, speed. Of course everyone is interested in speed. These are fast little enclosures and your drives will run cool. I copied 330 GBs to one and it felt very slightly warm, but not anywhere near hot. It had been powered on a couple of hours to reach running temperature, then the transfer was done. Speed is hard to measure with caching etc, but they'll do over 100 MBs, even with SATA II drives. Again, caching makes it hard to tell exactly, but I was getting over 450 MB/s using a 240GB OCZ Vertex 460 SSD (Not the newer 460A model, but older plain 460 which is a faster MLC SSD). I was using a 5 Gbps USB 3.0 port and SATA III speed is 6Gbps, so it's bottle necked just a little if you're not using a USB 3.1port at 10 Gbps. The packaging is good with individual items sealed in plastic and the enclosure is well protected. Overall this is the best 2.5" aluminum hard drive enclosure packaged deal on the internet (that I can find). It comes with a complete set of cables and it's a very good looking enclosure. The photos don't do it justice if you ask me. It also includes a nice small screwdriver, so now I have a screwdriver in my drive carrying cases. I like carrying cases with plenty of room for all of the accessories. There is nothing like not being able to do the job when you arrive. I think you'll be very happy as long as you're aware of power requirements etc. You'll be copying and moving files in no time. This is a 5 star deal all day! Oh, one more thing, cost. I did a lot of research because I needed more external or USB C enclosures. I originally bought a Minipro USB 3.1/eSATA model for the eSATA, and it's just too expensive to buy a lot of those. All of the other Type C enclosures I mentioned cost from $10 (ten) to $18 (eighteen) MORE, at $29, $30, and $38 for the Tripp Lite. The MiniPro is $29 and the Vantec is $30 and none come with as many cables . USB C is the fastest if it's plugged into a 10 Gbps USB 3.1 port but these are plenty fast on a USB 3.0 port, too. At 10 Gbps, USB 3.1 Gen 2 is even faster than eSATA but I can't comment more on that because I only have 3.0. I'll be getting a couple of more of these pretty soon and they'll be right at home when I upgrade my motherboard. You can also install an add in 4x PCIe card if you absolutely must have 10 Gbps USB 3.1, but I'm using my last PCIe slot for a NVMe SSD. I'm also running Linux but tested in Windows 7 too. Good luck.

* Update * I've had this for a year now. Reading from a Win10 machine has worked fine, but writing to the drive just doesn't work, as described below. Turns out the problem is THE WIRE. They ship a very low quality USBC to USBC wire, and it just drops the connection to the drive shortly after it starts writing. Note that this still happens after a complete OS re-install and an additional year of driver updates since I first observed this problem. I bought a separate Anker USBC to USBC cable and it now works great. Windows was reporting 19MB/s, which is just under half the advertised bandwidth of th Reading to Win 11 machine with Anker 450Mbps cable: 40 MB/s, which is peak of wire Reading to Win 11 machine with provided cable: 78 MB/s, which is far less than drive's advertised peak of 520 MB/s Writing from Win 11 machine with Anker 450Mbps cable: 19 MB/s, which is half peak of wire Writing from Win 11 machine with provided cable: fails all the time * Original review* FAILS ON WINDOWS 11 Just bought mine. It works fine on my two Windows 10 machines but fails on my Windows 11 machine that has identical hardware to one of the Windows 10 machines. The failure is that it won't write more than about 100 files before the drive goes offline. Reads fine but just can't write.

I had to return this as I could not secure the enclosure within the housing. The screw holes on the one do not line up (not even close) to the holes on the other. Since I had gotten a brand new 2TB SSD drive I was not about to just wing it. Update: The seller immediately contacted me to resolve this problem and we had some dialog back and forth so I could more clearly describe the issue I had -- the screws holes in the outer case did not line up with the screw holes in the inner enclosure so there was no way to secure the enclosure so it would not slide out of the case. They were quick and polite and even though I had already received a refund they offered to send me a unit free to confirm they had resolved the problem. The new unit I received has been manufactured correctly. I tested with the drive I had previously received and it works well. I'm giving this 3 stars though as performance, especially on the write side, is below what I would expect with a drive of this type (Samsung 860 EVO 2TB) which is rated at 550 MB/s read and 520 MB/s write. With this enclosure I was getting about 503 MB/s read and about 261 MB/s write. I have another USB 2.1 Gen 2 enclosure that is able to get the rated 550 MB/s read and 515 MB/s (almost rated 520 MB/s) write with the same drive, cable and computer/connector/source files (on a much higher speed--~2600 MB/s--internal NVMe drive). I did pay a little more for the other enclosure. One plus with the Cable Matters enclosure is they ship it with both a USB Type-C <=> Type-C and Type-C <=> Type-A cables. The other enclosure I got only had that Type-C to Type-C cable so I had to purchase a second cable for use on older computers with just USB 3.0 (3.1 Gen 1) with Type-A connectors.

it is acceptable. but not recommended for lasting/ heavy usage.

I really like this enclosure. It fits my ssd quite nicely and seems to be of very decent quality. The top case is aluminum and matches the space grey Macs quite well. Throughput speeds are as good as can be expected for a sata ssd. The stock cable that comes with it is sufficient in getting those speeds. Those of you with an M1 Macbook Air should know that using the usb c charging cable that came with you Mac will hurt performance even though the Apple cable looks to be of higher quality. Definitely a nice addition to carry with you for added space on the go. If you want faster, opt for an M.2 NVME version to really hit those top numbers. I’m happy with my purchase and would buy it again.

Very good product works well, excellent quality

Seems sturdy and well built, works perfectly. Got this aluminum one to match my laptop so I don't care, but the SSD is not actually in contact with the aluminum, only with the plastic on the front and bottom so the fact that it is aluminum won't really help with heat dissipation if you're looking for that, but the vent at the back should do enough. One thing that did annoy me at first was the that the SSD in the case was not secured by anything other then the plug, and would flop up and down within the enclosure, hitting the top and bottom when moved. However upon going through the box again, hidden under the plastic liner thing is a small foam square to put in between the SSD and the slide-on cover, and now it doesn't move at all. That foam should probably be stuck in there from the start but at least it's in the box. Great!

Attached it to a thunderbolt port using included USB-C to USB-C cable. Fast and works well.