Customer Reviews

Macally PHR-250CC - Hard Drive Enclosure - 2.5" - IDE - Firewire / Hi-Speed USB

5 star:		(42)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This is an OK enclosure to invest in if you are positive that you will never need more than one, but if you ever plan to add another, beware. MacAlly ships every unit with the exact same internal GUID, in violation of the FireWire standard. The GUID is supposed to be unique for every device, so your computer can tell them apart, but these aren't -- so as soon as you add the second one, your machine goes bonkers. If you spend enough time on the phone with MacAlly support (a task in itself) they will deign to send you a low-level tool to rewrite the GUID in one of the enclosures -- however, it runs only on Windows, and even then, not on all versions of Windows. By the time you have reached this point, there are other enclosures on the market at roughly the same price point that are a whole lot less grief to set up.

I bought a new 60GB hard-drive for my Pismo Powerbook, and was looking for a bootable enclosure to clone my old 20GB internal drive. The Macally PHR-250CC enclosure turned out to be perfect.

Installed the new 60GB into the enclosure within about 6 minutes. Cloned the 20GB to the 60GB in the enclosure in about 30 minutes (using the free version of SuperDuper to make a bootable clone); rebooted (e.g., restart OSX with the option key held down) from the enclosure and all applications worked perfectly.

Swapped the two drives and now have the 60GB as my Powerbook's internal with the 20GB in the enclosure. Total time to clone and replace my hard-drive was about one hour.

I heartily recommend this Macally enclosure. Nice fit, finish, and it runs cool in the Firewire mode--but being able to boot is a great advantage since many other Firewwire drives are not bootable.

Use: Turn PowerBook G4 60GB Hard Drive into a portable hard drive.

Overall Opinion:

-Installation instructions were very simple and accurate.

-Came with all of the cables you'd expect and then some.

-Well made, sturdy and all of the fittings are snug.

This enclosure cost a bit more than the others, but it was metal instead of plastic, came from a brand I trust and it included all of the cables, which was not the case for many others I looked at.

What they could improve:

Update the instructions to explain that it takes a long time for the drive to show up the first time you hook it up - there seems to be some sort of indexing going on. (I'm on a Mac)

Also, when you connect the hard drive to the pins inside the enclosure, a few pins hang over. Seems like they should either provide a little protective piece for that or tell you that it might happen. Made me nervous to plug it in for the first time.

A review by A. Franz in Oct. of 2005 says that this drive is not bus-powered by the USB 2.0 port; however, after contacting Maccally I found this to be incorrect. It is in fact bus-powered by both Firewire AND USB -- it's sitting on my desk as I type, powered through the USB port. Thankfully, I didn't go upon reviewers' advice only -- do your research.

Great product. Highly recommend.

I use this enclosure with my (previously internal) 40GB Toshiba drive. Works just fine with Mac OS 10.3. Mounts the drive automatically (mounts all partitions, if multiples). I used Carbon Copy Cloner to backup my main harddrive and it takes about 30 mins for roughly 20 GB (includes a repair permission).

Installation of the drive was easy. It comes with one (1) Firewire cable and two (2) USB cables. The second one is to be used as a power supply, in case the primary USB connection doesn't supply enough power.

Very pleased so far.

I bought three of these drive enclosures and am using them with 2 Seagate 5400 / 100GB drives and one Hitachi 5400 / 80GB drive. The enclosures are well constructed and seem to work fine. But, there are two drawbacks that keep me from awarding 5 stars. 1) They are slightly larger (and therefore slightly less portable) than some enclosures I have used in the past. 2) The drives require a normal USB connection plus an additional USB port for a power cable (included with the enclosure). Other enclosures I have used were able to get sufficient power from the main USB connection.

I had to replace a Hitachi Travelstar 80Gb hard drive in my PowerBook G4. (used a Seagate Momentus which worked fine). I needed an interface for the Hitachi to connect it to the Powerbook to retrieve my old files (80 Gb is a lot of typing). The Macally device worked with the Hitachi drive (using Firewire AND USB -- I tried both -- Firewire wasn't as big an improvement as I had hoped). Bottom line: I got my data back with minimal expense, minimal hassle, and a simple direct connection. -a happy customer..

I used the enclosure with a Toshiba laptop hard drive and it is faster enough for me to edit DV over firewire if the drive is fairly empty. General file transfers over firewire are fast and USB transfers seem to be too. I can power it from the Firewire port on my MacBook Pro with the drive I used if I need to, some faster drive will more than likely need additional power. But I usually use the USB power connection anyway. The activity/power LED is very bright, this could be annoying to some, but I am okay with it.

The enclosure is rugid and well designed. The hard disk controller on my labtop died. I put my hard drive into the enclosure and boot from it (FireWire only on Mac). It works great! The drive goes to sleep when it is supposed to. It gets its power from the FireWire cable (so no need for an extra clumsy power supply). FireWire connection is Fast enough to use as a system disk. Love it. Highly recommend it (much better than one by CompUSA)

The only drawbacks are cosmetic:

1) the blue indicator light is way too bright. So bright, it hurts my eyes to look at it.

2) the case is too industrial looking - more of a tough man's toy, not a pretty girl's toy.

3) it does not match my laptop - it is silver, my laptop is white.

I purchased this enclosure to salvage the hard drive on a laptop of mine that had died. Upon receiving the unit, my first impression was how well designed it (and the packaging) was. The unit has a very attractive design and is a lot smaller than I thought it would actually be. It's roughly the size of two of your typical $10 pocket calculators stacked on top of one another.

I have the unit transferring data over the firewire cable and being powered over the USB cable. Note that the USB "power cable" actually has a different "power adapter" style connector on one end for connecting it to the unit, and your standard USB plug on the other end. I don't know if other units are like this, but thought it worth mentioning.

There are a couple of quirks with this units. First of all, the small screws that hold the enclosure together strip VERY easily. Use a philips screw driver with a sharp, pointed tip (not a rounded or blunt one) and be sure to apply lots of pressure when first starting to remove the screws. The second problem I have with this unit is the LED light on the front. I'm not kidding when I say that if the lights in your computer room go out, you can use this thing as a flashlight (think Mag-Lite intensity). Do NOT look directly into this light, as it will hurt your eyes. The light was so bright that I actually got a piece of masking tape to put over it to dull it down a bit.

Overall, it's a really great unit except for these two problems. I don't have a problem recommending it to anyone.