Optical Drive External Enclosures

[jodie]

So I'm adding a WH16NS40 drive to my NAS to rip my discs, but my case (Fractal Meshify 2) doesn't have a drive bay. And I don't want to put the drive in my case's basement and have to take the side panel off every time to change discs.

Are there any good enclosures with SATA to USB Adapters that will allow me to use the optical drive outside of the case? And will the USB connection sufficiently power the drive?

[dcoke22]

The Flashing Guide has a list of external enclosures.

I have 3 drives in external enclosures; two in the OWC Mercury Pro enclosure and one in a Vantec enclosure. All three have their own power supply and have worked well connected via USB.

[Saebasan]

For those who will look at this in the future.

External enclosures are becoming less and less available on the market, especially the 5.25"
As a result they are becoming pretty expensive.
2-3 years ago, it used to be around 3000-4000 yens though (25 bucks maybe at that time)...
Dunno about the states, but here in Japan today, we are looking at 13000+ yens for these enclosures ( yen is cheap, but 87 bucks ).

Example with these OWC and Vantec.
https://www.amazon.co.jp/Vantec-%E5%A4% ... 4KCN&psc=1
https://www.amazon.co.jp/OWC-Mercury-5- ... 356&sr=8-7

However and fortunately, I found one enclosure with USB 3.0, + eSATA... and fan ventilated... for less than 5000 yens. Around 35 buck
The brand here is "Groovy"

For all, external optical drives lovers out there...




Sides are plastic but with some vents. Upper/Lower panel are metallic (maybe aluminium). The heat dissipation seems good.

[Backu68]

I think I may be a little bit of a weirdo in this.. I bought an old DVD Duplicator, 2x Mini SAS to 4 SATA Cables, a Dual Mini SAS SFF-8088 to SAS36P SFF-8087 Adapter, 2 External Mini SAS 26pin (SFF-8088) and an LSI 9200-8e HBA for my setup. Unfortunately, the 8 Sony Optiarc drives weren't recognized by Windows (seems like it doesn't like multiples of the same item), so I had to start replacing drives. Got 4 of those same drives installed (windows recognizes just fine), and 4 DVD drives in it now. Rips 8 disks in just a few minutes time. When I finally get through all the libraries, all I have to do is unplug the tower, and remove the 2 cables connecting to my system, and it can go into a closet.

[thetoad]

one doesn't need an enclosure for a 5.25" drive. there's a usb->sata cables (with external power) that work with optical drives (though note, not all do, some just provide a hdd interface). can just connect it as needed (or leave always connected, but I haven't tried that. In general an optical drive doesn't have components visible that can short out the drive if not mounted properly.