Addonics Zebra Drive Enclosure
The Addonics Zebra enclosure is a versatile and easy way to add a DVD, CD or hard drive as an external drive to your computer system and even home entertainment system.
Ease of Use, Performance: 18/25, Look & Feel: 18/25,
Features 20/25, How much I enjoy 18/25
Total: 74/100
Versatility is the name of the game with the Zebra drive enclosure and there is so much you can do and add on with the Zebra. The model I received for reviewing from Addonics is the ZUSCSU along with the SATA to IDE converter model ADSAIDE.
The Zebra drive enclosure for the eSATA or the USB connects through a special cable that attaches to the Addonics Zebra enclosure with a connection they call the USIB. The USIB cable is a special connection that allows any of the Addonics cables with this same connection to connect to your system. I received both the USB and the eSATA connection cables that have the USIB on the end that connects to the drive enclosure so pretty much any drive I want can be used on one of the several computers I have at my home/office.
I have tried the Zebra enclosure with both SATA and IDE hard drives and optical drives and have not had any problems from the drive enclosure. The only problem has been from Vista and sometimes not wanting to recognize the optical drives so a few times it will run through a setup. After the installation the Vista system has no problems running discs on the optical drive such as music CD’s or movie DVD’s.
It is so nice to have the ability to move an optical drive and even hard drives and not have to mess with uninstalling them from inside the computer. External drives make it easy for many tasks especially with media files and movies as well as burning and editing videos. Being able to move the drives around means having to spend less if you have several computers and don’t want to have so many drives in them all.
I have recently been playing around with movies and my media player or PlayStation 3 and found the ease of an external drive sure beats trying to download movies from one computer to another networked storage solution. Just picking up the drive and connecting it to the computer and downloading the movie files takes far less time than through my network ,especially if I am using one of my wireless connected computers.
The Zebra drive enclosure is well made with a few exceptions that I have to agree with other complaints about that I have found on the internet. There was nothing major and ones that I found to be only minor but worth mention. The drive enclosure fits any standard or slim 3.5” or 2.5” hard drive and 5.25” optical drives. There is plenty of space inside as well as screw holes to add your drive and I had no problem adding a smaller hard drive and regular sized optical drive.
The enclosure opens up with two thumb screws on the back and the cover slides off toward the front of the enclosure but I do wish the thumb screws were a little larger. The base plate that the drives screw onto is an aluminum plate that is secured to the back that has the fan and small circuit board that the power and connections go through.
This plate does rattle around if you move the drive enclosure after installing a drive so some care has to be taken not to jumble the unit around when moving. It is a piece of electronics so some care should be taken when moving it but I do have to agree with some of the others who mentioned this about the drive moving around inside when it’s all buttoned up. A piece of foam rubber on the drive or the cover will stop it from hitting but this should not be necessary if you just exercise some regular caution.