When picking out what kind of hard drive enclosure you need, there are three things for you to consider: 1) compatibility, 2) looks, and 3) price. For the first one, you have to find out what kind of enclosure you need for your specific hard drive. If you have an IDE or Parallel ATA hard drive, then you’re going to be able to use this enclosure, whereas if you’ve got a Serial ATA hard drive, you won’t be able to use the MS04. I was told by SilverStone that when they produced this product, they intended it for people who have old hard drives laying around idle. Because of this, it makes sense that they wouldn’t include SATA support, as it would only add cost, and perhaps be superfluous. I don’t think many people have SATA drives just laying around, because they’re a newer technology, and most probably believe they deserve a spot inside the case. For compatibility in the future’s sake, it would’ve been nice for them to include SATA support, but I understand their view, and hey, it’s not like USB can handle speeds above UDMA 100 IDE drives anyway. Here’s a look at what’s in the box:

When it comes to looks, it’s completely personal. And I, personally, really like how the SilverStone MS04 Hard Drive Enclosure looks, but I’ve already gone on enough about the looks in my intro. Just take a look at the pictures and decide for yourself if you like it. It comes in both silver and black, and I opted to get the black one, but it does look remarkable in both flavors. I know SilverStone to be a good name in the computer case business, so let’s hope that their hard drive enclosure follows suit. The first thing to check is how easy it is to install.

The installation of a hard drive into the MS04 is extremely straight-forward, as one might assume. I mean, basically, all you do is take out a couple screws, slide out the tray, screw down/plug in the hard drive, and put it back in. There are always some kinds of things that catch you off guard, though, so I’m going to go through how my installation went.

First, you remove the two screws from the end of the MS04 with the vent grill. Next, you slide out the tray, which is inside the hollow body on a couple guide rails, and place it somewhere relatively static-free. After that, you grab your hard drive, and place the anti-vibration feet (not mentioned in their instructions) at, I’m guessing, the four corners of the hard drive on the side with the screw holes. After placing the rubber feet, it’s time to screw the hard drive down to the tray and plug it in.

The next, probably most difficult step, is to slide the tray back into the enclosure without getting any cables caught on anything. It took me a few tries to do this right, but it’s simple enough. Then, you just screw the the end back on and plug it into your computer. Installation takes at most about 5 minutes, and it should only take that long if you’re eating a sandwich at the same time. This is how I arranged the wires so it’d slip right in:

Notice, also, that there is a small fan inside of the hard drive enclosure. I’m not sure if the fan makes a big difference or not, because you can’t feel much air movement. I’d say that it’s much better than nothing. I don’t know if I’d trust this with some of the hard drives that’re known to run super-hot. Maybe I would, though.. I mean, the unit IS made of aluminum, which is supposed to be good at dissipating heat, and there IS a fan. I haven’t quite decided whether or not I would suggest this hard drive enclosure for a hot-running hard drive. For that matter, I don’t know that I’d suggest any hard drive enclosure for a hot-running hard drive. I suppose the MS04, with its one small fan and aluminum body, would outperform most others as far as heat dissipation goes.

Now that we’ve got the hard drive installed, what else is there to do? Use it, of course! Now we’ll take a look at how the the SilverStone MS04 performs, and compare that performance to the Dynex Aluminum USB 2.0 Hard Drive Enclosure. One thing that I’d like to point out is that the hard drive must be formatted correctly. I had a little trouble with this, but after doing a thorough NTFS format, it worked like a charm. I plugged the hard drive enclosure in, and Windows XP instantly found it.

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