Some computer enthusiasts have toyed with the idea of using laptop hard drives in their desktop PC. Because of their lower noise and heat, they are perfect for small builds, home theater PCs (HTPCs), or any other computer appliance where silence is golden. I’ve even known people who set up 2.5″ hard drives in a RAID array so they perform faster than a traditional hard drive, yet are practically silent. You may even have just a buttload of laptop hard drives laying around and want to get some use out of them.
Regardless of your reasons, placing a 2.5-inch hard drive into a desktop PC requires some special mounting hardware and interface adapters What if there was some hard drive enclosure that allowed you to not only easily use laptop drives in your rig, but allowed for hot-swapping as well? Well iStar USA has you covered with their BPU-2535V2 2.5-inch to 3.5-inch hard drive enclosure.
Below are the specifications and features of this nifty little gadget:
BPU-2535V2 internal drive cage is a compact and cost effective solution for an internal 3.5” drive cage with two 2.5” hard drives. It provides an extra storage within a compact design to satisfy many application needs. BPU-2535V2 is constructed of aluminum material that provides best heat dissipation required for high performance 2.5″ laptop SATA drives. It is easy and quick to install it into any tower or rackmount chassis.
Features & Specifications
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On the next page we take a in-depth look and install it…
The BPU-2535V2 cage looks like a miniaturized version of iStar’s other drive enclosures (one of which reviewed here). It is practically the same dimensions as a desktop hard drive (but is about a centimeter longer.
The front of the cage has two doors with metal handles and small locks, which are of rather high quality, but we’ll show you more on this when we install the drives. The left corner of the drive is notched slightly, and has small activity LEDs next to their corresponding doors. Inside the enclosure is a small plastic bag with two hex keys (for the front doors), installation screws, and a small paper manual.
Both sides of the cage have holes to fit a standard 3.5″ (floppy) bay, but do not have holes to mount inside a standard hard drive bay. The bottom of the cage has ventillation holes, a few identification stickers, and mounting screws to keep the whole thing together.
On the rear is a standard SATA data and power interface, and a plug for an additional SATA cable. The additional port is to access the second drive in the enclosure, as this case does not provide any sort of RAID or drive translation (JBOD or BIG). The primary port is placed in the same spot as a desktop hard drive, and actually fits in standard HDD docking bays (like the device reviewed here).
So how easy is it get installed? Read on…
The drive cage does not have screw holes to mount this enclosure internally, but could be easily modified to do so. You would lose the hot-swap features of this enclosure, but you would then be able to fit two laptop hard drives neatly in a small form factor.
This drive is intended to fit inside an externally-accessed 3.5-inch drive bay, and the front panel is notched so you can see the activity LEDs of each drive. Once the device is mounted, all you need to do is plug up a standard SATA power cable from your power supply, and two SATA cables (one for each drive you want to access).
Inserting and removing drive is very simple, even if you’ve never used hot-swappable enclosures before. Just pull on one of the front door handles and pull the door open. A small lever at the back of the unit pulls on the installed drive, undocking it and sliding it forward for easy retrieval. The reverse is just as easy… insert a drive and close the door and the drive is automatically mounted and powered. Usually HDD enclosures only power the drive once the door is locked, but this is not so with this cage… once you plug it in then it is powered. The lock only serves to prevent accidentally opening the door (or theft).
We tested a variety of 2.5″ hard drives and SSDs in the enclosure and achieved the exact same performance both with and without the enclosure. The cage is essentially a “dumb” device so there are no chips to translate or manipulate data in any way and provides a straight-through connection. Some may actually prefer an external RAID card, as “internal” solutions tend to not have professional features like data rebuilding, recovery, and administrative alerts.
On the next page we consider its usefulness…
Many users will want to use this device to mount small drives and SSDs into their small HTPC and gaming appliance builds, but this requires adding more mounting holes. This device was intended for use in a standard desktop or server to add additional storage in a space that would otherwise go unused. There are several practical applications for this device. You could use it to reduce or eliminate noise in a HTPC (using SSDs would make the drives absolutely noiseless). This device could even be an alternative to using backup tapes… just plug in a new drive and let the backup schedule continue as normal. If you’re a fan of several operating systems, you could hot-swap your boot drive to alternate between several versions of Windows, Linux, or a “sterilized” test environment. You can even test the limits of SSDs by RAIDing them together, and don’t forget that IT shops will find cloning drives so much easier with this.
This hard drive enclosure is so cute and nifty that hardware enthusiasts just can’t resist having one in their desktop rig. It is perfect for small SSDs. Now that I have it installed, I’m not sure how I ever lived without a cage like this. The RAIDed version is the next part on my list…
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