It's a nice enclosure. Arrived super fast. Ordered it this morning and it arrived the this evening. It came in the original shrink wrapped packaging, and didn't appear to be used or a return. The only unfortunate part is that the screws and feet stickers show as being included, both in the manual and in the photos of the enclosure were not included. It was sold by Amazon, so there is no contact seller link. Hopefully they will see this and send them to me. I had screws from an old build that I was able to mount the drive with, but I don't have any that works to hold the enclosure closed, and I don't have any of the rubber feet stickers.

The front LED is waaay to bright for use on top of a desk, so I disconnected the easily traced cable from the board inside. Unit is an aluminum chassis and plastic innards. It's fine for what it is, and with dwindling options on the market you kinda have to take what you can get.

I purchased the 12.7 mm drive enclosure so that is what my review is about. The first one I received I followed the instructions to the letter. After everything was put together the instructions said that if you are unsure if your computers USB port can power the device with just the main cord, then use both cords. which I did. Then the device would continue to connect and disconnect repeatedly. I then disconnected the device waited for my computer to catch up because it seemed that it was getting the connect/disconnect at a very rapid pace which took about 30 seconds to catch up. I then only tried the main cable with the same results of connecting and disconnecting. I tried a different USB device in each port to verify they were working and they were. I believed the device was defective so I returned it for a replacement. it arrived in about 2 days and I honestly didn't have high hopes as I had seen someone else with the same issue, but I thought maybe it's just a fluke. I installed the drive again, used both power cords and the connect/disconnect happens again. tried with 1 cable, still happens. but I noticed something this time around. when I connected the first cable I watched the drive access with a connect sound. but go haywire after I connected the second cable for extra power. I unplugged the device again and this time restarted my PC. when I was booted up I tried only the main cable. it made a connected noise and that was it.. I attempted to open the drive and it did with no issue. I inserted media into the drive and it read it just fine. I think the Issue is something to do with windows 10, because it happened across all my pc's all with windows 10 installed. I believe that it tries to read the device across the second cable and becomes confused. also this didn't work from my USB Hub I had to connect it directly to my tower. So my final say about this is, it's a good device and if I had figured out the issue sooner I would have probably figured the first one actually worked. So if you have the same problem, simply restart your PC, and only use the main cable. I've had no other problems since then.

It is a near-perfect product. It is true that it is a bit bulky, but there is not much to improve in this regard as the design needs to be flexible to host any type of drive. The screws feel a bit flimsy and I recommend exercising care while tightening them, but other than that, the enclosure is very well built and looks durable. I find the price ($46) a bit steep for what this is, but there are barely any other options and all of them are even more expensive. I would have traded the aluminum shell for a plastic one if this could lower the price. Some people, including myself, could find plastic a better option. Despite this minor cons, it works perfectly and it is very well designed.

From my research I already knew for a fact that the highly rated OWC Mercury enclosure had already gotten bad marks from disappointed users for only supporting installation of 7" (177.8mm) or shorter 5.25" optical drives. My objective was to install my 7.5" (192mm) Panasonic SW-5584 BluRay drive (that had previously been installed in a desktop PC that died and was replaced by a smaller machine that didn't have any 5.25" expansion bays) into an external enclosure.

So I knew I couldn't use the OWC enclosure as the SW-5584 drive is about 192mm (7.55") long with the front bezel attached. I then found the Vantec enclosure which is a bit longer than the OWC.

The Vantec NST-536S3-BK enclosure is actually 252mm in total length but the electronics and connecting SATA/power cable at the rear of the internal tray between the drive and the rear panel with USB and power connectors take up some of that total length. The documentation says the enclosure supports an optical drive 185mm (7.3") or shorter. That means the SW-5584 is about 1/4" longer than supposedly acceptable in the Vantec enclosure, but it might be too much. Or, it might just fit if I was really lucky.

I called Vantec tech support to ask bout this and they thought it would just fit (depending on where the side fastening holes were on the drive relative to the rear of the drive where the SATA connectors live). The problem is not with a bit of the excess projection out the open front "nose" of the enclosure but rather how much clearance the rear of the drive (from the fastening holes on the side of the drive back to the rear end of the drive) consumes once the SATA power/data connector is attached and the drive must be slid back in the tray in order to be tightened down with screws.

Worth a shot I decided.

Well, it arrived today, and to my glee it JUST BARELY FIT! No extra room to spare, but nothing broken either. It works!

Yes, I had to carefully push the drive back into the tray after attaching the drive to the SATA connector in order to fasten the drive to the tray with the four screws, to be sure to not do any damage to the short SATA power and data cables. These had to be curved up in a short loop to allow the tray to be pushed all the way back, without getting damaged or breaking any solders to the electronics in order for the drive to be slid back far enough so that the fastening holes of the drive were now just visible through the fastening slots on the tray.

Miraculous. It was just barely enough. Not one piece of extra room left. Inside the rear of the enclosure the tray was now backed all the way to where the SATA cable actually meets the electronics it's soldered to. It's as far back as it can go, and all four fastening screws are tightened cleanly between tray and drive. Then I the completed tray+drive assembly into the metal enclosure, fastened the rear-end black plastic cover with two screws to now hold the tray+drive securely inside the enclosure so that it's all one unit now, and I'm done. All black stealth.

The front black bezel of the SW-5584 peeks out of the open front "nose" of the enclosure by maybe 1/4" but the enclosure itself is also all black as is the SW-5584 so that you would never even know it's probably supposed to be flush on the front . Looks perfect, with the small protrusion of some of the bezel actually looking very attractive.

And it works perfectly as well. The drive tray opens and closes perfectly, and the unit is handled perfectly by Windows. I hope there's no unnecessary stress on the SATA cable solders caused by the U-shaped curve I had to impose on it in order to slide the tray all the way back, but I think it'll be just fine.

Case closed. Surgery a success. Pressing the four small rubber feet pads (with sticky adhesive on one side) into the four indentations present on the enclosure's underside lets it sits horizontally on my black tabletop and be very decorative, and functional as well (its top surface can be used for anything, as there's no heat generated). The black bezel of the SW-5584 looks straight ahead and the tray opens/closes easily and perfectly It's a very attractive all-black desktop addition, and the curved blue light that shows USB-active/drive-ready is also sleek.

Excellent product. I couldn't have gotten away with this install if my drive had been 8" long (as some Sony drives are), but I was able to successfully install my SW-5584 which I measured to be around 7.5" with the bezel on.

Highly recommended.