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.

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!

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.

Works good with EAC and dbPoweramp and their accuraterip thingy. Chunky and robust case.

Didn't work out of the box due to faulty power adapter. NB: Other people in the UK rating 1 star reviews have noted the same thing. I triple checked the UK plug adapter that clicks on firmly with a nice 'click' sound, was indeed seated correctly. The power adapter that came with it and didn't work is: KTEC P3225 Model: KSA-36W-120300D5 Input 100-240v 50/60Hz 1.0A Output 12.0v 3.0A 36W I had, by fortune, a spare power adapter at home, so I used this to test if it was a faulty power adapter and it worked first time and the drive was detected correctly in Windows 11 - proving it didn't work out of the box because of a faulty supplied power adapter, not due to a incorrectly fitted SATA power/data connector internally or any other reason. At this price, in my opinion, this is not good enough. Otherwise it's an adequately manufactured unit with a nice aluminium outer shell. My only other complaint is the USB cable is far too short and the mains cable on the power adapter is too short also.

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.

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.

The enclosure is sturdy and largely well made, though some case edges are sharp. Looks-wise it lacks a bit of finesse (i.e. not Mac-level finish), but it is still the best looking full size optical drive enclosure I've found. There is no fan on the enclosure, which makes it quieter than Lindy's offering. The USB interface and the Pioneer drive in it was immediately picked up under Windows 10, which was a good sign. However, the enclosure has compatibility issues with longer DVD drives, like those from Pioneer, meaning I had to use sticky tabs to install my Pioneer drive in it, rather than screws. This seems a big oversight as Pioneer is one of the major DVD/Blu-ray drive manufactures. This is a shame as the case itself is big enough to house it, it's just the dimensions of the interface board that prevent it. If the interface board circuit was redesigned to be wider and shorter, then nearly all drives would fit. Likewise, if a second mounting position was added, then Pioneer drives would be able to be mounted, albeit sticking out a 2-3mm from the front without the need for them to redesign the circuit board. Although it is a niche product, it feels a bit overpriced, especially given that it costs more than twice the price of most consumer DVD drives.

Je l'ai pris car ayant un précédent modèle avec l'arrière en plastique et la façade en plastique qui s'est cassée à cause de la matière fragile que c'est et qui était devenu irréparable. Ce modèle l'owc Mercury est de qualité tout en métal .Le lecteur blu-ray étant stable à l'intérieur est devenu silencieux. Avec les logiciels de gravure ,le graveur Blu-ray Asus est immédiatement reconnu. Les seuls défauts qui sont mineurs ( c'est la raison pour laquelle j'ai mis 5 étoiles) : 1) le transformateur d'alimentation est bizarre,il semble y avoir une lumière led verte d'activité mais elle ne s'allume pas ( ? ) 2) ça aurait été bien des vis de fixation mieux adaptées car si on les enfonce trop ,elle ne sont plus retenues par les rondelles caoutchouc antivibration . Des rondelles rigide ( métal par ex. ) auraient été bien pour éviter d'enfoncer les vis. ( NOTE: pour ceux qui auraient perdu le transformateur est ces spécifications techniques,je laisse une photo des inscriptions en façade)

OWC Mercury Pro USB Enclosure A few weeks ago, I finally broke down and bought a new PC that would run Windows 11. When I got it, I realized it had no optical disk bays. Since I do a lot of photography and often make Blu-Ray disks this was a real problem. I went looking for a good external drive case I could use and found the OWC Mercury Pro. When I got it, I looked it over carefully and liked it. It has a heavy aluminum shell and fits a standard drive perfectly. It runs USB 3.0 at 5Gb/s which lets my Blu-Ray drive run at full speed. It has an “off” switch on the back of the case so the drive can be turned off when you are not using it. It does not require that you load drivers and works well with Windows 11. I did have a few minor problems putting it together, but it was no big deal. At this point I’ve burned several disks with no problems and I’m very satisfied with the case.

sturdy and good one

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.