External Drive Enclosures
How to Pick the Right One

An enclosure is a simple little box that turns a bare hard drive or SSD into an external USB drive you can plug into any computer. Slide the drive in, close it up, plug in the USB cable, and the drive shows up like a big USB stick. I use them constantly on the bench — and they're exactly what you need if you've just swapped a drive and want to reuse the old one, or if you've got a loose drive sitting in a drawer with files you'd like to get at. The one thing that trips people up is buying the wrong enclosure for the drive they have, so let me walk you through picking the right one. It's not complicated once you know the three types.

This guide is part of our complete Upgrading or Replacing Your Drive series.

1 What You'd Use One For

The most common reason is the one that brings people here from my guide on cloning a drive to an SSD or my hard drive replacement guide: you've upgraded to a new SSD, and now the old drive is sitting there doing nothing. Drop it into an enclosure and it becomes a portable backup drive — no sense letting a perfectly good drive gather dust. Beyond that, enclosures are handy for pulling files off an old drive from a dead computer, giving yourself extra storage on the cheap, or connecting a laptop drive to another machine to work on it. If you've got a drive and no way to plug it in, an enclosure is the answer.

2 The One Rule: Match the Enclosure to the Drive

This is where nearly every wrong purchase happens. An enclosure is built for a specific kind of drive, and they are not interchangeable. Before you buy anything, you need to know which type of drive you've got. There are three you'll run into:

• 2.5-inch SATA — the flat, palm-sized drives found in laptops, and most SATA SSDs. This is the mainstay these days, and the one most people need.
• 3.5-inch SATA — the bigger, heavier drives from desktop towers. Still around and still useful, though I hardly touch them anymore. The key difference: because they're bigger and draw more power, a 3.5-inch enclosure needs its own power adapter plugged into the wall — it can't run off USB alone like the smaller ones.
• M.2 — the little gum-stick SSDs that plug flat into a slot. These are newer, they're getting more common fast, and I expect them to overtake 2.5-inch drives within a few years. They come with their own catch, which I'll get to.

3 What to Look For (and What a Fair Price Is)

Here's my honest take after buying a lot of these over the years: brands come and go. The one I bought last year often isn't even listed this year. So I don't shop by brand name — I shop by price and a couple of specs, and that's what I'd tell you to do too. Look for:

• UASP support — a protocol that lets the drive run at proper speed over USB. Nearly all decent enclosures have it now; if one doesn't mention it, skip it.
• USB 3.0 / USB 3.2 — you want at least USB 3.0 (also called USB 3.2 Gen 1, up to 5 Gbps). M.2 NVMe enclosures often go faster, up to 10 Gbps. Avoid anything that only says USB 2.0 — it'll crawl.
• Tool-free — the good ones let you slide the drive in without a screwdriver. Nice to have, not essential.

As for price, here's my rule of thumb: a decent enclosure should run somewhere between $16 and $35. You can certainly pay more for a fancier metal case or a docking station, but I wouldn't pay much less than that — the rock-bottom ones tend to be flaky, run hot, or drop the connection mid-transfer, which is the last thing you want when you're moving files you care about.

4 My Picks by Type

Here's what I'd reach for in each of the three types, all sitting right in that fair-price range.

▸ 2.5-inch SATA — the everyday workhorse

▸ 3.5-inch SATA — for desktop drives

▸ M.2 — the rising star (with a catch)

If you already know for certain your drive is M.2 NVMe, there's a slightly cheaper NVMe-only version of the same VCOM enclosure that'll save you a few dollars. Only go this route if you're sure — otherwise the 2-in-1 above is worth the small difference for peace of mind.

5 A Few Hard-Earned Tips Before You Buy

A couple of things I've learned the hard way that'll save you grief:

• Double-check the drive type before ordering, not after. Returning the wrong enclosure is a hassle that a two-minute look would have saved.
• 3.5-inch enclosures need to be plugged into the wall. If you buy one and there's no power brick in the box, something's wrong — a 3.5-inch drive can't run on USB power alone.
• Keep the drive still while it's transferring. These aren't rugged shockproof cases — they're bare drives in a light shell. Set it on the desk and leave it be while files copy.
• Need a drive to put in it? If you're buying an enclosure for backup storage, my guide to external drives and my SSD picks cover what to pair it with.