OWC Mercury Pro USB 3.2 External Optical Drive Enclosure for 5.25" SATA CD/DVD/Blu-ray – Aluminium Case, Fanless, Plug & Play, Compatible with Mac & PC – No Drive

The new computer I recently bought, like many these days, had no optical drive. I wanted a mains powered optical drive rather than the portable USB-powered type. The CD/DVD drive in my last computer worked fine so it made sense to repurpose it before that computer was dumped. The OWC Mercury Pro enclosure looked perfect to house the old drive, and it was. The enclosure looks very smart in brushed and textured aluminium and is well made. It was very simple to install the old CD/DVD drive (a LiteOn IHAS124 24x drive) and it fitted perfectly, leaving about a 5mm space between the rear of the drive and the circuit board. The supplied USB cable was far too short so I bought a better quality 1.8m USB3 cable. The supplied power adapter had the correct UK pin arrangement. In use, the unit is impressive. As a test I transfered 9 compilation music CDs to the new computer (a Win 11 PC), which it did very quickly, averaging 6-7 seconds per track thanks to the USB3 connection. Write speed is also good, transferring 10 JPEGs of 12-15Mb from computer to CD in one minute. Clearly this depends on the installed optical drive but the USB3 connection of the OWC Mercury Pro certainly helps. Overall I'm very pleased with the looks, construction and performance of the OWC enclosure and certainly do recommend it.

Solidly built and fairly easy to install DVD drive. The drive is working fine and seems to do everything I want it to. It has a very strange USB connection to the case and a cable is supplied but seems a bit short. It’s unfortunate that it’s still USB 2 connection although it works using an adapter. The only downside for me is the extortionate price, if it was £20 cheaper I would recommend it.

Way better reusing an old internal drive in this caddy than using a thin external drive. A branded skinny external CD drive began to fail (became noisy/unbalanced and limited its read speed) so I decided to reuse an old DVD/CD ROM drive (20 years?) in this case than get a new external drive - and it was like some kind of huge relief. The skinny external drive couldn't read CD past 24x even when it was working - while I can now get 47x. It is also nice using a button to eject or a gentle push on the tray to load. The front panel (letterbox) is part of the cradle that slides into the aluminium extrusion. That is a weak point perhaps as it could be thicker or more rigid. Mine was OK. It is trivial to assemble - there are no instructions in the box - but then you hardly need any especially if you have inserted or removed any kind of SATA drive into or from a PC. The only thing to note is the rubber feet are not adhesive which you'll find out soon enough if you went ahead and screwed the cradle in place in the housing and had an ah-ha moment. The provided cable is long enough for my purposes with the drive sitting on top of a desktop PC. Price has gone up since I bought it - not good. Don't know why some outfit doesn't produce a full size fast external drive with a motorized tray all ready made - it would be no more expensive than this enclosure.

There's no mistaking this enclosure - it's shiny metal, though I'm sure it feels like aluminium, not the stainless steel in the description, feels well finished and very substantial - this isn't going to bend or deform if dropped. Having said that, the front plate arrived slightly bent, something others have commented on - resist the urge to straighten it as it will straighten when you asssemble the unit with a drive in it. Talking of drive, I put a Lite-On drive in the unit which was easy - connect the SATA and power connectors at the rear and position the drive so that the screw holes align, then put the 8 supplied screws in. Putting in all 8 helps prevent the frame from distorting and generating noise when the drive is active. Also, don't overtighten the screws or the grommets won't absorb vibrations and you'll hear (and feel) the result of your overtightening - just tighted enough to slightly deform the grommets. Slip the two parts together and screw together - if the front panel didn't straighten itself when you screwed the drive in bend to shape now with finger power (if you do it earlier you'll probably bend too much and end up having to remove your original bending). Attach the power supply, plug inot a USB3 socket and you're good to go - you'll have a smart looking unit that feels and looks like it'll last for years. It'll last much longer than the drive you put in it and as replacing the drive is easy it'll last as long as you need it for - it's unlikely you'll need to buy a replacement ever. I'm sure it can be spray painted if you feel like a change of colour/finish (but take the drive out and cover the SATA-USB board and sockets first). Highish price, but high quality - therefore good value.

High quality build in comparison to the leading competitor on Amazon which I had to return due to the lack of UK power supply. The all metal design looks great and offers a sturdy build. It also comes with the required 12v 3A power supply for UK EU and US sockets. I can't speak for all drives but it works perfectly with the ASUS BW-16D1HT.

Purchased this for use with an external CD/DVD drive. Quick delivery and well packaged. The product itself is made of metal. It has an inner bay that you mount your drive to, and this fits inside the outer housing. Everything is secured with screws (provided) and is very easy to assemble. The build quality is very good - it feels weighty, solid and robust. The enclosure looks smart and tidy. So far performance via the USB 3.0 seems great. Would heed the advise of other reviewers on here while assembling - resist the temptation to straighten the front panel. It arrives looking slightly bowed / bent, but this flattens out once you slide the inner bay into the outer housing and screw it all together. Also - don't over-tighten the mounting screws which secure the drive in place as it will prevent the rubber grommets from damping any vibrations. Would give 5/5 stars, but feel the price is still a little bit steep. Yes it is good quality and should last many many years of use, but would have felt slightly more comfortable paying around £40 for it. No regrets, but I'm hoping I won't need to purchase another any time soon!

These days external usb i/F cases for half height drives are as cheap as chips, but finding a case for a full height 3.5 inch optical drive is getting progressively more difficult. I like a solid box, weighty enough noy t to be easily knocked off its perch, and robust enough to last a few years. Optical drives are no longer fashionable, but I will need one to rip my cds and install software for a while yet. I put a Plextor DVDRW drive into the case. It was easy and intuitive to do. I confirm that purchasers will NOT need to "straighten out" the drive casing to go over the top of the installed optical drive - when the optical drive is slotted in and the supplied screws and pedestal feet are screwed in the "benT" strip is automatically straightened out. I only had one slight problrm in that one of the screwholes on the base of the optical drive was a fraction out from its pedestal screw hole. I'm not sure if this was the case or the Plextor drive's fault. Just loosening the other pedestal screws a little and applying a bit of pressure let me get the fixing screws into all the holes, and I could then tighten them up. If you are only going to buy a DVDRW optical drive for £10 - £20, you could just get a USB/SATA interface and power supply for about £20. It would do the same job but a bare drive wouldn't look as nice or be as robust..

The enclosure for my Blu-ray drive does exactly what it says on the tin (aluminium). The title of the item and description says that it is stainless steel which it isn't and if you look at the photo of the packaging you will see that it says it's made from aluminium "AL" (see the highlighted blue box). Also, if you look in the second photo which is of the package contents, you can see the drive enclosure, a power cable and a transformer to power the unit. However. as you can see the transformer is of the type that you slide on the appropriate connector for your location. As I'm in the UK I expected it to come with a 3 pin plug to slide onto it. Unfortunately it didn't. Neither does the power cable with the 3 pin plug attached (shown) that was supplied, have a female socket in the transformer to go into as the transformer is a solid box and doesn't allow for the other end of the cable to be inserted. So I was left with the 2 pin European style plug to use instead. Use of a shaving plug adapter sorted the problem, which fortunately I already had, but still not particularly good. The supplied USB3 cable however, is really quite short and makes for difficult positioning if you have to place it further away from your computer. Apart from these few problems the enclosure works well. Had I bee supplied with all the proper parts this review would have been a solid 4 stars, but because of the issues above it's a 3.

sturdy and good one

I've had several optical drives from old Mac Pro systems and thought this would be a good companion for a Mac Pro. And it is, it looks great on top of a Mac tower case, it blends in. It's not meant to be portable - with an optical drive inside it, it weighs just over 3 pounds, and just over 2 pounds empty; it's meant to look great on your desk or shelf. Very solid construction, no sharp edges or other manufacturing issues. I knew it would come with a US power adapter only but luckily it works with 100-240V and it's the bog-standard barrel jack. It says it's USB 3.2 but I couldn't verify because I don't have any bluray drives that would saturate the USB bandwidth. I know I can burn DVDs at maximum speed.

Very premium and robust aluminium (luckily not stainless steel anymore) case. Works flawlessly with macOS 11.6.

The enclosure was very well made. Cover was aluminum with inner casing with electrical connectors of good quality. It fits my Asus CD drive very snugly. I am pleased with my purchase. The enclosure with my CD drive work very well.

Easy to assemble. Has all the cables required mounted in the case. Works perfectly.