With so many external hard drive enclosures, how do you pick which one to buy these days? I mean, the market is absolutely FLOODED. The first dozen or so reviews we did on the things amazed us with how practical they were. Then companies started adding extras like fancy LED lights or even support for more than one type of interface. One thing for sure, not all enclosures are created equal. A cheap enclosure is pretty much a cheap enclosure, like it could be built out of materials that will crumble under constant movement. Or even worse, a poorly built enclosure's electronics could lead to the host USB port getting smoked! With so many enclosures to choose from, you can surely find the unit that best fits your needs AND tastes.

      As technologies advance on the PC front, external enclosures are also growing to adapt. What I'm talking about here is external SATA, or eSATA. But with Intel's bold move in completely removing the IDE bus from their motherboards, you're probably going to find yourself with a spare IDE drive too. Of course, Eagle Tech will have you covered there as well. What's that you say, you have more than one spare SATA drive but don't feel like lugging around TWO enclosures? How about an enclosure that lets your put both of those drives together AND combine the storage space? Oh yes, Eagle Tech makes it!  What I intend to do over the next few pages is show you three of Ealge's most innovate enclosures since the enclosure was first invented.  So without further to-do, lets get started!

     Let's start with this unit which has been designated by Eagle Tech | Consus as a T series. This particular model is the ET-CSTSIU2-BK. What makes this unit so special is its ability to mount either a SATA or IDE drive. Check this out! First off, it's a little more complicated to open than a standard enclosure. Yes, it uses screws and whatnot, but the base is permanently mounted and part of the opening process. So you'll need a thin shank Philips tip screwdriver to gain access to the guts. There are four screws on that base that are really easy to get to.

     The last screw you'll need to remove isn't quite so easy to get to, unless you have that thin screwdriver I mentioned earlier. Once those are removed, you simply slide the chassis out from the enclosure and you're ready to mount the drive.  

     This is the point where this enclosure gets real interesting, because you get to use either a SATA or IDE drive. For purposes of demonstration, I'm going to use an IDE drive. However, both the 80-pin flat and SATA interface cables are already on the circuit board of the enclosure. The only thing you'll have to swap is the power cord.

     Eagle Tech has made that really easy as well. Each cable has been made to a length that will accommodate its particular drive, and you won't have a lot of excess cable to worry about stashing. As for hooking the power cord to the enclosures board, the connector is keyed to only go one way, so there is almost no way to get the power cord hooked up backwards, in theory. Once you have the interface and power connectors hooked up, you just have to use four screws,  that were inside the enclosure in a parts bag, and mount the hard drive to the chassis and slide it all back together.

     Most 3.5" enclosures require an external power source and this one is no different. Since we have to utilize an external power source, we're going to need an AC adapter, and this is the one that Eagle Tech packed with this unit. For better or worse, the adapter is all one unit, meaning the power cord that goes to the wall and the enclosure are all attached as a single piece. Most enclosures that I have used in the past, use a power cord that comes out of the adapter. I like the one piece construction better because it reduces the chance that something can get lost.

     This particular model only has support for a USB interface so the back of the enclosure is pretty simple. The power plug, the USB connector, and the On/Off switch.

     To give the enclosure its last bit of flare, Eagle Tech has illuminated the base with a simple blue LED. The back portion of the base will be illuminated any time that main power is on while the front half will flicker and flash when the drive is accessed.

     Hitting the drive/enclosure combo with a quick HD Tach benchmark shows a solid 35 Megabytes/second burst and sustained data transfer rate. Obviously, USB 2.0 is our bottleneck here.  It goes without saying that USB based enclosures are all about convenience and portability rather than blistering performance.