Customer Reviews

RocketfishTM - 3.5" Hard Drive Enclosure

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I've used a lot of different brands of external drive enclosures and this one is by far the best. It seems that so many drive enclosures for 3.5" drives are designed to be difficult to open an close. With the Rocketfish design, you have large Allen key (hex) bolts in the corners. These are stronger and much easier to use than the hardware of other enclosures. The bottoms of the bolts have little rubber feet that help the drive run as silently as possible. The drives also stack really well if you have more than one.

The drive kit comes with an honest-to-goodness user's manual and the 4 foot USB cable is plently long. The red part of the drive (with all the fins) is anodized aluminum. So not only does it look real cool, it dissipates heat very well.

The picture of the enclosure here is kind of odd. You wouldn't put it in the stand oriented in that direction with the connectors on top. You'd either put it on its side or as I prefer, flat on the desk

For anyone with Windows XP or Vista, the drives are plug & play. A cool blue light shows when the drive is in use. I have several of these Rocketfish drive enclosures (including the smaller 2.5" size), and they have worked flawlessly for me.

If you're upgrading the drive in your desktop computer, don't waste the old drive, just throw it in one of these enclosures and use it as a backup.

REMEMBER this drive enclosure is for older EIDE/ATA drives (lots of pins) rather than the newer SATA drives (small connector). Most if not all desktop computers sold now are using SATA drives inside. I'm not sure if Rocketfish makes this same style enclosure for SATA drives.

Length:: 2:08 Mins

This review explains the inner workings and function of the Rocketfish External Hard drive case.
Lots of images and specs on this review. I hope you enjoy it and find it helpful.

www.rocketfishproducts.com

I bought this USB hard drive enclosure as an easy and fast way to transfer lots of files from my old computer to my new one.

The process is extremely simple: I pulled the drive out of my old machine; put the drive into the Rocketfish drive tray (two cables and 4 screws to hold the drive firmly in place); put the tray/drive assembly into the enclosure and screwed the lid down.

That's it.

The drive was immediately recognized as "Local Disk (G:)" on my Windows Vista System. (It also recognized "SYSTEM_SAV(H:)" which I assume is the boot volume on the drive.)

The enclosure is attractive and well-made, consisting of a red,finned, aluminum chassis with glossy black side panels. There is a small stand that permits the enclosure to sit on its side, and it is very stable in this configuration. The system does not seem to get more than slightly warm.

I am glad I bought this thing-- it made transferring 10,000 photos as easy at it possibly could have been.

When my Maxtor drive broke it was once again due to the connections and not the drive itself. I took the drive out plugged it into a this enclosure and got all the information safe and sound. The computer pros were suggesting data recovery costing over a thousand dollars!!! Of all my external hard drive problems the problems as always been a bad firewire connection or something like that. The drives have always been okay so give this a try before taking any super expensive measures.

WIth my new, unformatted Maxtor 200GB drive I plugged in the one IDE cable and one power supply connector, used the four screws to secure the HD to the chassis and the lid to the enclosure. Plugged in the power supply, which is actually pretty tight so I don't know about power supply issues because I have to pull firmly to get that plug out. With the included USB cord I plugged it up to my laptop. XP downloaded a driver and I was up in... 1 minute? 2 minutes? No clicks, just a balloon that said my hardware was ready for use.

From there a quick format with the Windows program diskmgmt.msc (on the "run" command line), scrolled to the bottom to the unformatted drive, chose NTSC and named the drive. I was slapping pictures, music, videos and feeling good as this was a DIY project that couldn't be any simpler! Valuplanet was my seller, open box purchase. I love it and will buy another one as soon as I can figure out if it can take a 500GB drive:) I even use it with my new LG flat panel HD tv (32LG70) to slideshow my pics and play my music!

Oh yeah, it has a blue led to show when its on. It flashes when the drive is at work and it also includes screws, wrench, stand, manual, and driver CD should you need it. The LED is also a one-touch copy button. I guess it copies your HD in its entirety but I haven't tried it:)

Overall, as I said, Rocketfish is a brand I'm going to try as I just got my Rocketfish HDMI cable to use with my LG 1080p TV:) All aluminum with a red trim, it matches my TV! LOL!

This product is definitely good for what it says. The only problem is that it should be mentione that it supports older hard drives, not the newer ones. Maybe it's an error on my part, but I looked up on this product and only after following several links did I find this out. So now I can't use it except with my older computer's drive. Luckily, I'll need it eventually, though. So overall this is a good product and runs well. I like the build of it. The included allen wrench and cleaning cloth are definitely pluses.

I ordered this from Amazon and paid $16.98 for it. I used this to salvage a hard drive from a 7-year-old Dell PC, and it was $16.98 well spent. While I'm fortunate in that my old PC's demise was due to the motherboard and not the hard drive, this product was a life-saver brought me much relief in knowing that I could unseat the hard drive from my old PC and re-seat it into this enclosure, plug it in, and go. After I transferred my computer data to my new laptop, I now have this drive enclosure sitting upright next to my computer and I use it as a backup for the laptop. I know that the enclosed hard drive won't last forever, and when that happens, I'll probably have to purchase an actual external hard drive. However, this product did what I expected of it, and it continues to perform well. It is USB-based so I can plug it in and unplug it at will quite easily from my laptop, and there is a power switch on the enclosure so I can control when it is off and on. I choose not to leave it on as it does have a bit of a hum to it (although that's probably more from the old hard drive itself rather than the enclosure, but the enclosure it not really a sound-insulated device). The setup was easy and the speed via USB seems quite reasonable to me, even when transferring large files.

The one thing I love about this product is that it is solid aluminum. Most other enclosures are plastic or metal/plastic with thin screws or snap ons. This one has the build quality of something manufactured as an external such as those complete external drives from Western Digital or Seagate. These take standard size industrial screws, which holds every piece real firmly in place. I love the color, red, black, blue LED, and the curved and perforated metal construction, which gives it this real modern heat-sink look. The rubber feet at the bottom hold the drive firmly to any surface. I think these were some brand from Best Buy or something that went out. You'll most likely only find refurbished ones of these online but for less than $10 shipped, u cannot get anything better for the price and construction. Just be warned though that some of these do come very beat up with faulty USB controllers. But of the half dozen or so that I bought, I have only had one that came DOA. Seriously good deal if you are willing to take the risk and make a return if necessary.

Wonderful product but have found it at half the price at other locations including at Best Buy in the store for $60.00 for the exact same package. As much as I love buying from Amazon this is way too much money plus the shipping.

I bought it from "nansbooksnmore" as open box item.Great Design - anodized aluminum look real cool and it dissipates heat very well.