I was at Lamington road searching for certain products and looking at options available in USB 2.0 enclosures for 2.5" laptop hard drives. There were half a dozen models available in that category but there was one that kept showing up in almost every shop I visited. It belonged to some company I had never heard of - BlueGhost. Going by its popularity (amongst the dealers) and its attractive pricing, I borrowed a piece to review from a known vendor. So let's take a quick look at what it has to offer.

For those who are new to the concept of drive enclosures, let me brief you on that. Simply put, these enclosures are used to convert your IDE devices like hard drives and optical drives that connect to the IDE port on your motherboard, into external USB 2.0 devices so that they can be carried around and plugged into the USB port of different PCs to transfer data. That saves you the trouble of opening the PC cabinets and connecting the drive. Also, USB ports support hot swap (connecting and disconnecting devices when the PC is on without the need to restart it) and can be found on almost all the PCs bought in this millennium.

To take full advantage of this product make sure your PC has USB 2.0 ports. The USB 1.1 and 2.0 ports look alike and most of the USB 2.0 devices work with the USB 1.1 ports, but at much slower speeds. But USB 2.0 is a significantly faster connectivity standard as compared to USB 1.1. The USB 2.0 can manage a theoretical throughput of 60 MBps, while USB 1.1 can do a maximum of 1.5 MBps in theory.

This BlueGhost enclosure in focus here is a neat looking device for the 2.5" EIDE hard drives. It is pretty sleek too. The finish could have been a touch better though. The dimensions stand at 5"x 3"x 0.5" (LxBxD) and it weighs about 30 to 40 grams without the hard drive and about 150 grams with it. It just about fits into a standard-sized pant pocket. The casing is made out of some kind of plastic but there is a metallic feel to it. May be it's just the semi-lustrous blue shade it is draped in that gives one that impression. The words "For IBM Travelstar" and USB 2.0 are printed on its top surface. No wonder, it is commonly known as the IBM casing, even though it has nothing to do with the IT giant. The USB connector and a read/write LED are present on the side of the drive. The package comprised of the casing, an instruction leaflet that tells you how to plug the drive into the casing, a USB cable, a small screwdriver, a pair of screws, a driver CD and a carry pouch. To be precise, everything that you would possibly need other than the hard drive.