**Building an External SSD with a 2.5" Hard Drive Enclosure**

When it comes to managing large files and data, having an external storage solution can be incredibly convenient. In this article, we'll explore how I built my own external solid state drive (SSD) using a 2.5" hard drive enclosure. This project not only saved me money but also provided a unique opportunity to get creative with my computer setup.

I started by researching different options for building an external SSD on Amazon. The results were impressive, with prices ranging from $129 to over $200, depending on the model and features. However, I noticed that many of these enclosures were discontinued models, which made me look for alternative solutions. That's when I stumbled upon this 2.5" hard drive enclosure that came with a shell, a little foam sticky pad, an external USB micro 3.0 cable, a Tob connect cable, and a secondary power cable.

**The Benefits of the 2.5" Hard Drive Enclosure**

What makes this enclosure special is its built-in USB 3.0 hub. The device has three extra USB 3.0 ports on the edge, which provides an additional two ports compared to what's available on my main computer. This feature is perfect for users like me who need to transfer large files between devices, such as video editing projects that require multiple hundreds of gigabytes of storage.

The install process was relatively straightforward and simple. I simply installed the solid state drive into the enclosure and secured it using a little sticky foam pad if needed. However, I did encounter some issues with the SATA and power connection lining up properly, which caused me some trouble at first. But with a bit of patience and persistence, I managed to get everything working smoothly.

**Using the External SSD**

Since purchasing my external SSD, I've been able to transfer files between my server and main computer much faster than before. The convenience of having a dedicated storage solution has made a huge difference in my workflow, especially when working on video editing projects. With an external SSD like this one, I can quickly move large files back and forth without worrying about running out of space or slowing down my system.

**What to Expect**

One thing that surprised me was the positioning of the ports on the enclosure. Since it's designed for a 2.5" hard drive, the USB 3.0 micro connection is on one side, while the power jack is on the opposite side. This can make it tricky to access both ports at the same time, but I've learned to adapt and use them in different ways. Additionally, there's an HDD power switch that allows me to toggle between enabling or disabling the drive for specific applications.

**Conclusion**

Overall, I'm extremely happy with my external SSD enclosure and the value it brings to my workflow. By choosing a 2.5" hard drive enclosure as opposed to purchasing a pre-made top-brand product, I was able to save some money while still getting a reliable and feature-rich storage solution. If you're looking for an alternative way to expand your storage capacity or improve your data transfer speeds, building an external SSD with a 2.5" hard drive enclosure is definitely worth considering.

**Additional Resources**

If you enjoyed this article, be sure to check out our social media pages on Twitter and Instagram, where we post behind-the-scenes content and updates on our latest projects. You can also support us on Patreon by becoming a patron for early access to all of our videos, as well as helping to make these videos possible through your monthly contribution.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enif you've been following me on Twitter you may have noticed my complaints that I've been spending a lot of time recently struggling with storage space on my computer and network drives and things like that I've been really desperate for a mass storage solution I've yet to find that but in this video I'll show you a different solution that I found that will make my life a little bit easier temporarily especially once we cover a couple more conventions and that's to do my own sort of DIY external solid state drive which will help me transfer footage faster between my laptop to edit on on the go and my desktop as well as gives me for what I built 500 gigs of external solid state drive storage for much cheaper than you'd pay for a normal external solid state drive let's check it out so perusing Amazon for external solid state drives especially in the 500 GB and above capacity does not wield all that many results mainly because the price points are a bit higher than people would like deeming them not super popular at the moment but then I found a way to build my own a lot cheaper so I went with a 500 GB or 480 GB model which is this ad data SATA 6 gbit per second SSD it is the Premier sp550 and it is a 480 GB solid state drive cost me around 108 bucks now literally the week before I finally decided to pull the trigger on the purchase it was on sale for under a 100 bucks so keep in mind if you're waiting if as long as you're willing to wait for sales and play with this you can actually get this for a lot cheaper than I paid then I picked up this initech external 2.5 in enclosure it was again on the week before when I planned this whole video it was on sale for $17 I paid about 21 so if you count what I paid which was 108 for the solid state drive and 21 for the enclosure it's 129 bucks for a 500 gig basically external solid state drive look that up on Amazon you're paying at least $150 closer to $200 sometimes depending on what you're getting and a lot of them are discontinued models so instead I picked up like I said this external initech SSD or actually it's a hard drive enclosure but it's a 2.5 in enclosure which comes with the shell itself a little foam sticky pad in case you're using an ultra slim Drive which is mainly hard drives comes with the external USB micro 3.0 a Tob connect cable and then a secondary cable for power as well well you may be thinking to yourself that this isn't a super crazy idea external docks and enclosures and adapters have been around for a while what makes this special especially to require a second USB port on a computer or a wall to USB wart of some sorts this actually has a USB 3.0 Hub built in as well so on the edge where the you know power and activity indicators are for the hard drive itself it actually has three extra USB 3.0 ports which makes it perfect for using with my new laptop when I'm going to be editing on it because that means I get to hook up the hard drive and use it with the laptop without sacrificing USB 3.0 ports on the computer in fact I gain an additional two on the whole the install process was fairly straightforward and simple you take your solid state drive install it in the enclosure now I had a little bit of trouble with this SSD and the enclosure the SATA and power connection on the enclosure lining up properly it does look like it's installed a little crooked for some reason but that was the only way I could get it to actually like line up with the Jacks and then like I said they do include a little sticky foam pad if you need to make you know keep it from wiggling around if you have a Slimmer than 2.5 in Drive mine fit perfectly did not need the pad Slide the panel back over top the enclosure and then like I said on what what I don't like about this is that the ports are on OPP opposing sides of the enclosure that is simply because of how small the access area is but on one side you have the USB 3.0 micro connection and then on the other side you have the power jack which is a tiny little circle DC 5vt power to USB power and then the USB 3.0 ports on the other end like I said before with indicator LEDs now you also have an HDD power switch to enable power to the actual hard drive itself which you will of course need on if you have a drive in or you can just turn it off if you're just using it as a USB hub now there are a few different of these kinds of of enclosures available some for cheaper especially if you go without the USB ports like I said but there are a few different versions of this kind of thing out there and you can build an external SSD for Fairly cheap and it's already proven quite useful moving files back and forth between my server when it's already doing other things or just because I don't have the space on my main computer to actually move them off the server onto and to move video files over to my laptop fairly quickly when I'm talking multiple hundreds of gigabytes of files to edit video very convenient and worth the price for me especially since I got a fairly good deal on the solid day drive and that's the big thing is you're going to for this to get the best deal out of it if you're doing it from a budget point of view you're going to want to wait on the best sale you can find because that will give you the best possible price of performance you know price per storage ratio of course and especially savings below buying a you know a a pre-made top brand product I just thought this was a cool little project and wanted to share it with you guys if you enjoyed the video be sure to smash the like button get subscribed for more awesome videos check out the link in the description below I got product links for both of these that I have used as well as a search for the other types of enclosures you could use and solid state drives as well and then we have our social media Pages where you can follow us on Twitter get more updates get more behind the scenes things Instagram where I post a lot of behind the scenes photos as well as you know photos of how I built the setup things like that and our patreon campaign where you can get early access to all of these videos even earlier than vessel for a small monthly contribution of your choosing and you get to help make these videos possible because they're not cheap and it's not easy to do hope you enjoyed thank you for watching comment like subscribe I'll see you in the next oneif you've been following me on Twitter you may have noticed my complaints that I've been spending a lot of time recently struggling with storage space on my computer and network drives and things like that I've been really desperate for a mass storage solution I've yet to find that but in this video I'll show you a different solution that I found that will make my life a little bit easier temporarily especially once we cover a couple more conventions and that's to do my own sort of DIY external solid state drive which will help me transfer footage faster between my laptop to edit on on the go and my desktop as well as gives me for what I built 500 gigs of external solid state drive storage for much cheaper than you'd pay for a normal external solid state drive let's check it out so perusing Amazon for external solid state drives especially in the 500 GB and above capacity does not wield all that many results mainly because the price points are a bit higher than people would like deeming them not super popular at the moment but then I found a way to build my own a lot cheaper so I went with a 500 GB or 480 GB model which is this ad data SATA 6 gbit per second SSD it is the Premier sp550 and it is a 480 GB solid state drive cost me around 108 bucks now literally the week before I finally decided to pull the trigger on the purchase it was on sale for under a 100 bucks so keep in mind if you're waiting if as long as you're willing to wait for sales and play with this you can actually get this for a lot cheaper than I paid then I picked up this initech external 2.5 in enclosure it was again on the week before when I planned this whole video it was on sale for $17 I paid about 21 so if you count what I paid which was 108 for the solid state drive and 21 for the enclosure it's 129 bucks for a 500 gig basically external solid state drive look that up on Amazon you're paying at least $150 closer to $200 sometimes depending on what you're getting and a lot of them are discontinued models so instead I picked up like I said this external initech SSD or actually it's a hard drive enclosure but it's a 2.5 in enclosure which comes with the shell itself a little foam sticky pad in case you're using an ultra slim Drive which is mainly hard drives comes with the external USB micro 3.0 a Tob connect cable and then a secondary cable for power as well well you may be thinking to yourself that this isn't a super crazy idea external docks and enclosures and adapters have been around for a while what makes this special especially to require a second USB port on a computer or a wall to USB wart of some sorts this actually has a USB 3.0 Hub built in as well so on the edge where the you know power and activity indicators are for the hard drive itself it actually has three extra USB 3.0 ports which makes it perfect for using with my new laptop when I'm going to be editing on it because that means I get to hook up the hard drive and use it with the laptop without sacrificing USB 3.0 ports on the computer in fact I gain an additional two on the whole the install process was fairly straightforward and simple you take your solid state drive install it in the enclosure now I had a little bit of trouble with this SSD and the enclosure the SATA and power connection on the enclosure lining up properly it does look like it's installed a little crooked for some reason but that was the only way I could get it to actually like line up with the Jacks and then like I said they do include a little sticky foam pad if you need to make you know keep it from wiggling around if you have a Slimmer than 2.5 in Drive mine fit perfectly did not need the pad Slide the panel back over top the enclosure and then like I said on what what I don't like about this is that the ports are on OPP opposing sides of the enclosure that is simply because of how small the access area is but on one side you have the USB 3.0 micro connection and then on the other side you have the power jack which is a tiny little circle DC 5vt power to USB power and then the USB 3.0 ports on the other end like I said before with indicator LEDs now you also have an HDD power switch to enable power to the actual hard drive itself which you will of course need on if you have a drive in or you can just turn it off if you're just using it as a USB hub now there are a few different of these kinds of of enclosures available some for cheaper especially if you go without the USB ports like I said but there are a few different versions of this kind of thing out there and you can build an external SSD for Fairly cheap and it's already proven quite useful moving files back and forth between my server when it's already doing other things or just because I don't have the space on my main computer to actually move them off the server onto and to move video files over to my laptop fairly quickly when I'm talking multiple hundreds of gigabytes of files to edit video very convenient and worth the price for me especially since I got a fairly good deal on the solid day drive and that's the big thing is you're going to for this to get the best deal out of it if you're doing it from a budget point of view you're going to want to wait on the best sale you can find because that will give you the best possible price of performance you know price per storage ratio of course and especially savings below buying a you know a a pre-made top brand product I just thought this was a cool little project and wanted to share it with you guys if you enjoyed the video be sure to smash the like button get subscribed for more awesome videos check out the link in the description below I got product links for both of these that I have used as well as a search for the other types of enclosures you could use and solid state drives as well and then we have our social media Pages where you can follow us on Twitter get more updates get more behind the scenes things Instagram where I post a lot of behind the scenes photos as well as you know photos of how I built the setup things like that and our patreon campaign where you can get early access to all of these videos even earlier than vessel for a small monthly contribution of your choosing and you get to help make these videos possible because they're not cheap and it's not easy to do hope you enjoyed thank you for watching comment like subscribe I'll see you in the next one\n"