The UGREEN hard drive enclosure I found on Amazon was an ideal fit to help me recover my data from a dead computer. There are cables I could have used instead. But they cost around the same amount. At least now, the drive is still by my new computer and after transferring all the files I needed the UGREEN enclosure is still sitting by my computer in case I missed some. Eventually I will repurpose the enclosure for some other use or another computer.
I recently had my Acer computer fail. It might have been the power supply, but in any case the Geek Squad from Best Buy mentioned they could possibly fix it. The price would only cost about a $100 or so to take a look plus parts. Well, the computer was older so I pulled the plug and just got another computer. But the data was still on that drive, which posed a problem. I didn’t think the hard drive failed since I got not error on my PC mentioning it. Best Buy said they could recover the data and transfer it, but they would be too pricey.
The UGREEN box was only $22.99 when I bought it and has since fallen in price by $3! So it’s a bargain. And it’s really easy to use. All you do is to take the hard drive and it just slides into the SATA and power outlets inside of the enclosure. I saw some enclosures that you actually screw the drive into the enclosure which is probably a better idea if you are moving this thing around and you are jostling it. But I moved this around and the power and data cables were fine and still work perfectly.
The cover you just slide back to seal it up and then it’s just plug and play. It comes with its own power cord. So while some smaller external hard drives work from power through the USB cable this was does not. But everything feels and looks sturdy. The USB 3.0 cable is also very nice and heavier looking to plug into USB 3.0 ports when you are transferring data since the speed is going to be much faster. Your USB 3.0 ports are blue in color when you look inside the port on the PC.
So accessing the data was tricky. I never did this before but the Geek Squad told me where to look for it. You can this under Desktop, then Users then the user name. Sometimes accessing can give you trouble but I didn’t have to mess with permissions with the folder. YouTube provides a lot of useful videos if you have trouble.
Now this enclosure would have been great for a new hard drive. They are falling in price too. This UGREEN enclosure will accommodate 3.5 inch and 2.5 inch hard drives. I could use this drive as a back up drive for files from the new computer I have or even disk images. Nevertheless, the drive is older and I don’t want to rely on it for something I might need in a pinch. Besides, I could stick an SSD drive in there or some massive mechanical one. And remember a laptop drive would be the 2.5 inch size if you have an old one laying around.
UGREEN looks to make solid products judging from the construction of the hard drive enclosure and the cables. They have a page on Amazon too. After I went to their website, I found they make some other wonderful products that I would also love to try out.
