i’ve always had large external hard drive cases that house 3.5″ hard drives. these drives have always been heavy and have always required the use of an external power source.

after upgrading christi’s laptop with a bigger laptop ordered from newegg (because the SAME DRIVE upgraded from dell would cost an additional $150!!) i had a spare, albeit small hard drive lying around. not wanting for it to go to waste, i decided to purchase an external case for it.

i found a great deal for a $12 external case from meritline.com. the drive is compact, draws power from the USB port and works great. it also has an SATA connector in the back so that i can use an esata connection if i wanted to. unfortunately, i don’t have any devices that support the esata connector, but hey, maybe my next laptop will.

anyway, it’s happily formatting now and i’ll soon have an extra 75GB of space happily waiting to be used.

unexpected bonuses from this purchase is that the case came with a leather case, a USB cord AND an eSATA connector, as well as a mini screwdriver to help you screw in those tiny screws. not bad for $12.

now, yes, it does carry the meritline brand on the side of the case and that’s a little free advertising for meritline, but i’m ok with that.