There are a ton of these on eBay…starting as little as $3.99. It’s crazy. There’s also a blue and red one that look nice. I may have to try one out just for fun since it’s so cheap.
I’m looking forward to reading about your experiences with this product. It’s pretty inexpensive, but looks like it’s a grey-market item, as none of the listings has a model number or shows original packaging. A search of Sony’s product listings doesn’t turn up anything either, and it seems unlike Sony to sell an empty drive enclosure. I got burned once by buying a Sony USB mouse that was merely an Apple mouse with the VAIO logo silkscreened on. It’s so cheap I might pick one up for the heck of it anyway though.
Yeah, it’s definitely not Sony made…but it’s fun to try out. The only thing that concerns me is that the drive doesn’t look like it would be protected well. Also, the use of a USB to mini-USB cable is concerning since it’s a less common cable to have.
To anyone who might be considering one of these enclosures off of eBay I just received one today (£8). Overall, the case is pretty basic and there’s no internal padding at all, BUT the drive does fit VERY snugly into the casing so there’s no movement at all (I picked up a 2.5 40Gb drive new for about £65). The assembled item feels pretty solid.
The only real downside is that you have to use 2 USB ports to provide enough power. The drive comes with a special USB cable with two full size USB plugs and a mini to plug into the drive. Unfortunately as the USB’s are on both sides on the TR, the cable isn’t long enough and you need to add a USB extension to reach the other side. :x
Overall, not that bad considering it saves dragging a power supply around. I think you can get up to 60Gb 2.5 inch drives now, possibly 80 but I’m not sure on that. Anyway it’s worth considering if you need some extra storage.
I may try to get some pics up later if i’m feeling ambitious. :mrgreen:
[quote author=“twynne”]To anyone who might be considering one of these enclosures off of eBay I just received one today (£8). Overall, the case is pretty basic and there’s no internal padding at all, BUT the drive does fit VERY snugly into the casing so there’s no movement at all (I picked up a 2.5 40Gb drive new for about £65). The assembled item feels pretty solid.
The only real downside is that you have to use 2 USB ports to provide enough power. The drive comes with a special USB cable with two full size USB plugs and a mini to plug into the drive. Unfortunately as the USB’s are on both sides on the TR, the cable isn’t long enough and you need to add a USB extension to reach the other side. :x
Overall, not that bad considering it saves dragging a power supply around. I think you can get up to 60Gb 2.5 inch drives now, possibly 80 but I’m not sure on that. Anyway it’s worth considering if you need some extra storage.
I may try to get some pics up later if i’m feeling ambitious. :mrgreen:
The ones I saw on ebay all said max 40gb…not sure though.
Ah ok…so, it’s definitely not worth it. Most 2.5” hard disk cases that are USB2 only need a single cable and can run off the power of that single cable. :(
Yeah - I’m a bit annoyed about that, enough so that I may look for another enclosure as they’re so cheap. They [conveniently] don’t mention the 2 USB port requirement on the auction anywhere, nor the fact that they ship from Hong Kong and it took nearly 2 weeks to arrive. :x
They say in their [rather sad] instruction manual that not all PC’s will require the dual cable. I might try with a different cable without the split to see if I get better results. I’ll post back if I do.
Ok guys I just bought one of those “Cheap” aluminum enclosures that has VAIO pressed into it. The instuction manual does say that you “
might” need to use two usb ports, however I didn’t have to. Actually that’s partially true. When I got it I had already seen the post that said you had to use two usb ports, so I plugged a USB extension cable into the thing and hooked it up to both ports. It worked. After that I unplugged one of the usb ports, and guess what. It still worked. Now I just plug in the one cable and bang it’s ready to go. Don’t know what worked for me that didn’t work for other people but it does work on my TR2AP.
[quote author=“de1905”]Ok guys I just bought one of those “Cheap” aluminum enclosures that has VAIO pressed into it. The instuction manual does say that you “
might” need to use two usb ports, however I didn’t have to. Actually that’s partially true. When I got it I had already seen the post that said you had to use two usb ports, so I plugged a USB extension cable into the thing and hooked it up to both ports. It worked. After that I unplugged one of the usb ports, and guess what. It still worked. Now I just plug in the one cable and bang it’s ready to go. Don’t know what worked for me that didn’t work for other people but it does work on my TR2AP.
