Why would you want to do this? Quite simple- an enclosure lets you turn any internal SATA drive into an external USB drive, sometimes with Firewire (IEEE 1394 / iLink) or eSATA connections as well. Great if you’ve already got a spare hard drive lying about, or you just want more control over what type of external drive you get.

This demo uses a Sumvision drive enclosure, but the principles are pretty much the same for any enclosure.

1. Unscrew the enclosure
2. Remove the caddy
3. Plug the power and data leads into the enclosure’s board, then plug their other ends into the hard drive you plan on using.
4. Place the hard drive in the caddy and attach screws to hold it in place.
5. Place the caddy back inside the case and put the case screws back on. Done!

We swithered about making this video shorter (we could have shown all the steps in 90 second or so), but we decided to give you the 5 minute fitting in real time. It’s fairly straightforward, as you can see. Here it is, hosted courtesy of YouTube:-