How to Install a SATA Hard Drive in an External Enclosure

I had a PC with a failed motherboard that had a working 250 GB hard drive in it. Although I had a good backup of my work (and most of my play) from that hard drive, I wanted to recover the use of the drive. This PC had a SATA (serial ATA) hard drive and optical drives. Local computer and “big box” stores all carried PATA (parallel ATA) to USB adapters, but not SATA adapters.

After researching external enclosures online, I selected the NexStar 3 model INST-360SU-BK adapter/enclosure by Vantec. Figure 1 below shows the assembled enclosure and the box it came in. Immediately apparent is that the unit has an attractive black (onyx) mirror finish with chrome accents and a large blue LED Vantec logo for drive activity. As things go, it’s not very subtle, but it matches the piano black finish of the front of my PC. It also would not be out of place humming along beside a Media Center PC in the living room.

This adapter comes with both a USB cable and a SATA to eSata cable with an adapter “card” for the PC. The theoretical advantage of SATA over USB is that throughput can be up to six times faster than USB 2.0. (That’s for a PC/motherboard with SATA II. Standard SATA will provide a smaller improvement over USB 2.0.)

The packaging consisted of a cardboard box within a sleeve. Some care was taken with the design of the packaging, with each component sealed individually in plastic bags. No components were damaged or missing. Included was a readable paper user’s manual in conventional English.

Figure 2 shows the rear of the assembled unit. Shown from the top are the connections for eSATA, USB 2.0, and power, and the on/off switch. Figure 3 shows the PC adapter card and the eSATA cable.

This adapter, of course, only works with a SATA type drive. If you’re uncertain which type of drive you have, remove the side cover of your PC to expose the motherboard. Start at the back of the hard drive and follow the cable (it will be a regular cable, not a ribbon-cable) to the motherboard. You should see a group of rectangular sockets, as shown below. [See Figure 4]

Figure 5 shows the eSATA adapter installed on the PC. I’ve been having some fun calling it a “card.” Actually, it’s not. It uses a card slot, but it does not plug into the motherboard below the slot. The box refers to it as a “bracket.” The rear of the PC after installing the card adapter is shown in Figure 6.

The “power brick” and plug-in are shown in Figure 7. Two nice features of the transformer are that it has an end-plug arrangement and a pilot light. The cord itself is only about 4-feet long and was too short to plug into my backup power supply AND sit atop my PC. This was a bit disappointing as desktop space is at a premium on my desk.

The first step involved in inserting the hard drive into the enclosure is removing two screws and carefully pulling the rear panel away. A white cable was plugged into the circuit board that needs to be temporarily removed in order to pull the carrier out.

Once the carrier is removed, the next step is to plug the hard drive into the adapter. The plug on the circuit board engages both the power and data parts of the hard drive, and it’s a very easy installation. Figure 8 shows the hard drive being plugged in.

Next: Finishing Up, Testing Performance, and Specifications