Customer Reviews

Iogear 2.5" Hi-Speed USB 2.0 Ion External Hard Drive Enclosure II (GHE225U)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

After my Compaq Armada fried it's logic board, I had a doorstop that would cost more to repair than it was worth. So I bought a new laptop, but wanted to get the files of the old hard drive and wanted to have a backup drive. My old drive was a perfectly good IBM 2.5" drive, so I pulled it out of the broken laptop and bought the ION enclosure. The installation was a breeze, just remove the bottom cover, slip in the drive, and replace the cover. 3 minutes, tops.

I plugged the drive into my new laptop's USB 2.0 port and voila (WinXP home)! Transferred the old files, and backed up the new files in about 2 minutes. I then took the drive over to my wife's iBook running OSX 10.3 and plugged it in. It read the drive fine (even though the disk was FAT32) and I was able to back up files from her computer also.

Not only is the enclosure functional, but it's very sleek design. Looks nice, bus powered so no need for a wall wart. Totally quiet. Fabulous, best computer purchase I've made in a while.

Got this USB 2.0 enclosure for 2.5" drives over one month ago. IOGear claims it works with ATA 5 and ATA 6 drives; however, I cannot get it to work with my ATA 5 Toshiba MK6021GAS 60 GB 2.5" drive; not even with the extra USB/PS2 power cable. The drive spins properly but never appears in OS and gives a bunch of "bad disk" errors in event viewer in any computer.

So, I took the drive, put it back into my laptop, wiped and re-created the partition, formatted it and ran a thorough surface scan for errors and even restored a ghost image of this laptop on it with no trouble found. After that I tried contacting support four times: submitted support requests twice in two weeks on their web site (it seems like support is outsourced and not related to IOGear) with no response; third time the support web site didn't even work. Fourth time I sent an email message to their support email addres found at iogear's web site. NEVER RECEIVED ANY RESPONSE. I complained to my vendor, who literally replied "They suck." and asked me what other brand I'd like to use instead.

In addition, the enclosure manual is just a copy of other IOGear manuals for enclosures containing a hard disk. They didn't even bother to alter the manual for this version or include instructions why and how to use the extra USB/PS2 power cable and left it up to techies like me to figure it out themselves, or up to an average user to call a techie friend or throw the extra cable away as a redundant item not listed anywhere on the box or in the instruction manual. The enclosure manual states that the drive comes preformatted, which cost my CIO a big confusion because there is no drive until you install it, and his drive was not preformatted, so he had to call me to figure it out.

This unit works with another ATA-6 drive I have, but poor (in this case actually a lack of) support is always a deal breaker. I wasted way too much time on this product and never got it to work with the drive I want. After this experience, IOGear is on my black list (to use a less offensive term).

This case has a nice slim design and it worked like a charm, until the USB port broke. It seems the materials they use are not very high quality.

I used the Iogear- Ion Hard Drive Enclosure when my Compaq-"Evo N610c" went crazy- The Iogear was my miracle tool for the most part.

The operating system crashed on my Compaq and I could not access my files- It was a week of stress because I had not backed up any of my data (learn from my mistake -ALWAYS BACK UP YOUR FILES on removable storage!- weekly, monthly- your choice).

The Compaq only came with a "System RECOVERY" cd, which would completely reformat the hard drive providing a fresh start, YET losing ALL of my data. If it came with a "REPAIR" cd, I could correct the operating system without completely reformatting the hard drive. My only options with Compaq were:
1. get the operating system to work by running the "recovery" cd and losing the data.
2. Refer me to a local Compaq authorized repair store

I went to the repair shop, which charges you a diagnostic FEE, whether they can fix the problem or not! Guess what- they couldn't restore the data- saying that the drive was corrupted. Their only suggestion was sending the hard drive away to some fancy data recovery company to restore my data for a couple thousand dollars! Oh come on- that's more than the cost of the computer!

Having NEVER embarked on any computer repair project before, I still kept trying. I was able to recover a number of files starting the comp in DOS format before it too generated an error code!

I decided to try a hard drive enclosure (They seemed to make more sense than some of the software-based data recovery programs). My hard drive has an ATA-5 interface, so I got the Iogear.

I never removed a hard drive before, so I called Iogear's tech support. It took a while for them to explain. I also had to tilt the unit for it to run (perhaps it was how tight I inserted the drive OR the product itself). Nevertheless, it was pure JOY when I saw ALL my files on the screen and was able to store it on my USB drive! Yes- it worked!
I finally got my data off - Now, using compaq's system recovery Cd was no stress!

Conclusion:
PRO- the IOGEAR worked on my Compaq Evo in restoring my data. I used it with out prior training.
CON- 1. Iogear Tech support should be better trained & more familiar with the different drives the product is designed to serve.
2. The instruction manual is not clear and detailed enough- You will likely have to call tech support.

I purchased this external hard drive case to help me recover the data from my crashed notebook. The boot files on my notebook's hard drive was accidentally erased and my notebook could not start up Windows.

I took the hard drive out of my notebook and slipped it into the external hard drive case. *I want to point out that you are able to slide out the connecting end of this hard drive case and plug it directly into your hard drive (this is important if you are worried about your hard drive fitting into the external case).

After connecting the external hard drive case with my notebook's hard drive in it to my another computer I was able to easily retrieve my files. To retrieve your files, open up "My Computer" and the external hard drive should appear.

*Note, if the hard drive you are attempting to recover has physical damage this kit may not be much of any help.

This is truly a great buy. I have set it up with an old 30gb dell laptop harddrive I had sitting in a cupboard, and it works fantastic. It is silent, fast, and stays very cool doing transfer. Even better, it takes a standard mini usb cable, and can power through usb, so there is no need to carry any cables around with it! Set up was fool proof, and i had it up and running 8 minutes out of the box. My only complaint is that the "easy remove" belt clip was actually screwed in impossibly tight, and I had to drill it out.

Nevertheless, I am very happy with this purchase

You can't buy this, but if you could, you'd be pleased. It works quite well.

the enclosure is well built and looks good. works well out of the box with xp.

pro:

well built

cons:

longer the other enclosures

my hd did not fit initially, had to unscrew the other end and remove the rubber support(will need to cut it and place it back to prevent vibration)