Home > Consumer Reviews > Macally PHR-250CC FireWire 400/USB 2.0 2.5-Inch IDE Hard Drive Enclosure

Hard drive enclosures are partly a matter of personal taste -- what look do you like? If you appreciate Apple's aluminum industrial design circa 2004, then you'll love the MacAlly drive cases. The 2.5" cases are exceptional because you don't need to have a power supply attached. Assembly takes just a few minutes. Actually, I think I remember that when assembling, I didn't even bother with all the screws inside because the fit was so tight they just weren't needed. They're smartly designed to stack on top of each other, with rubber ridges that both provide a non-slip grip and air space for cooling. All in all, a perfect hard drive enclosure.

I'm so satisfied with MacAlly's cases that I have 2 of these 2.5" cases with 60GB drives in them, and 2 of the 3.5" cases with 250GB drives.

This is an OK enclosure to invest in if you are positive that you will never need more than one, but if you ever plan to add another, beware. MacAlly ships every unit with the exact same internal GUID, in violation of the FireWire standard. The GUID is supposed to be unique for every device, so your computer can tell them apart, but these aren't -- so as soon as you add the second one, your machine goes bonkers. If you spend enough time on the phone with MacAlly support (a task in itself) they will deign to send you a low-level tool to rewrite the GUID in one of the enclosures -- however, it runs only on Windows, and even then, not on all versions of Windows. By the time you have reached this point, there are other enclosures on the market at roughly the same price point that are a whole lot less grief to set up.

I bought a new 60GB hard-drive for my Pismo Powerbook, and was looking for a bootable enclosure to clone my old 20GB internal drive. The Macally PHR-250CC enclosure turned out to be perfect.

Installed the new 60GB into the enclosure within about 6 minutes. Cloned the 20GB to the 60GB in the enclosure in about 30 minutes (using the free version of SuperDuper to make a bootable clone); rebooted (e.g., restart OSX with the option key held down) from the enclosure and all applications worked perfectly.

Swapped the two drives and now have the 60GB as my Powerbook's internal with the 20GB in the enclosure. Total time to clone and replace my hard-drive was about one hour.

I heartily recommend this Macally enclosure. Nice fit, finish, and it runs cool in the Firewire mode--but being able to boot is a great advantage since many other Firewwire drives are not bootable.

Use: Turn PowerBook G4 60GB Hard Drive into a portable hard drive.

Overall Opinion:
-Installation instructions were very simple and accurate.
-Came with all of the cables you'd expect and then some.
-Well made, sturdy and all of the fittings are snug.

This enclosure cost a bit more than the others, but it was metal instead of plastic, came from a brand I trust and it included all of the cables, which was not the case for many others I looked at.

What they could improve:
Update the instructions to explain that it takes a long time for the drive to show up the first time you hook it up - there seems to be some sort of indexing going on. (I'm on a Mac)

Also, when you connect the hard drive to the pins inside the enclosure, a few pins hang over. Seems like they should either provide a little protective piece for that or tell you that it might happen. Made me nervous to plug it in for the first time.

A review by A. Franz in Oct. of 2005 says that this drive is not bus-powered by the USB 2.0 port; however, after contacting Maccally I found this to be incorrect. It is in fact bus-powered by both Firewire AND USB -- it's sitting on my desk as I type, powered through the USB port. Thankfully, I didn't go upon reviewers' advice only -- do your research.

Great product. Highly recommend.