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

I purchased this enclosure to salvage the hard drive on a laptop of mine that had died. Upon receiving the unit, my first impression was how well designed it (and the packaging) was. The unit has a very attractive design and is a lot smaller than I thought it would actually be. It's roughly the size of two of your typical $10 pocket calculators stacked on top of one another.

I have the unit transferring data over the firewire cable and being powered over the USB cable. Note that the USB "power cable" actually has a different "power adapter" style connector on one end for connecting it to the unit, and your standard USB plug on the other end. I don't know if other units are like this, but thought it worth mentioning.

There are a couple of quirks with this units. First of all, the small screws that hold the enclosure together strip VERY easily. Use a philips screw driver with a sharp, pointed tip (not a rounded or blunt one) and be sure to apply lots of pressure when first starting to remove the screws. The second problem I have with this unit is the LED light on the front. I'm not kidding when I say that if the lights in your computer room go out, you can use this thing as a flashlight (think Mag-Lite intensity). Do NOT look directly into this light, as it will hurt your eyes. The light was so bright that I actually got a piece of masking tape to put over it to dull it down a bit.

Overall, it's a really great unit except for these two problems. I don't have a problem recommending it to anyone.

Bought it to use as a firewire boot drive on an Ibook. Doesn't work for that, though it does operate fine as a firewire drive after the system is up. FAQ on Macally site is out of date and incomplete, firmware upgrade doesn't work and is badly documented, no answer from tech support after two emails and a week or so. The boot issue might be a software or cloning problem, but without tech support it might as well be design. The pros are it seems a tough case, easy to assemble. Wish I'd gone with Lacie, though.

Unfortunately some harddrives draw more power (>500mA?) than USB can provide, so an external power supply is necessary. For the price (around $40 from Amazon), a power supply should be included.
Otherwise the design and construction are quite nice, and Firewire performance is fine.

I've been using this enclosure with a Fujitsu MHV2040AH 40GB 5400 RPM drive for about 4 months now and have had zero problems. I was concerned that a 5400 RPM drive would require more power to drive and thus not be able to boot up without an external power source...but not an issue! Never even stutters on boot up. It actually boots up faster in OS X than many OEM 3.5 internal Mac drives that I've booted it from. Grear Drive Enclure!

this is my third Macally enclosure after owning different brands. The unit is simply perfect, solid construction with two FW ports. The one possible drawback would be that one USB port is not enough to power the unit, but I usually use FW. Thanks to Macally to enclude ALL necessary cables, and good quality ones too. That should be a point when comparing different enclosures.