OWC Mercury Pro 16X Blu-ray, 16X DVD, 48X CD Read/Write Solution

Ive purchased two of these. One for an Asus, one for a Pioneer. It is well constructed and very durable. Far more than what the optical drive could survive. KEEP IN MIND, it only fits drives up to 6.77 in length/depth. The Asus fit perfectly. However, my Pioneer did not. Strangely the Pioneer details were misleading: o Item Dimensions LxWxH 5.83 x 7.13 x 1.67 inches The 5.83” is under 6.77”. but alas, it they had the L & W reversed. the actual length/depth of the Pionier was 7.13. What did I do? I simply put Velcro on the bottom of the case and the bottom of the drive and it attaches securely. True, the drive’s black shiny bezel sticks out ¼” but it looks good enough to be on purpose. I dont plan to be tossing it around, so it will suffice. It would be nice if the case did support up to 7.25 though, to get rid of the complaints. :)

Easy to use to burn blu rays plug and play

I bought this to house a LG WH16NS40 Blu-ray burner. Ive only used it to burn a couple disks so far but it works just fine, no issues.

No semaphore time out error with ImgBurn on this enclosure and the Dell XPS 8930 PC. Im reserving my full judgement until after some more extensive use. I gave a good recommendation to my last enclosure, but after a little while, it started dropping communication with the device. Ive only burned 1 Ritek 8x DVD+RW in the Pioneer BDR-209M so far, but its performed well on it. However, it was later revealed on the other enclosure that this same media that caused no problems initially was causing the device to drop communication. So, Ill have to use this enclosure more to see if my opinion changes. EDIT 1: 2018-07-16 - There is one con I can mention. The included USB cable, while it is USB 3.1, is too short for any practical use. Youll need a separate longer cable or an extension cable, like I attached. EDIT 2: 2018-08-25 - Now that Ive had some time to put this enclosure through some paces, I have a better point of view on its performance. My rating remains the same. The only downside Ive really come across with it is sometimes when I power on the unit, particularly if Ive restarted Windows, Windows 10 doesnt recognize the Pioneer BD-2209 as being attached. If I power off the unit and try again, it shows up in File Explorer. This may not be a problem with the enclosure, but Windows or a particular configuration with my PC. I dont know for sure. I cant determine if its a limitation of the 2209 or the enclosure, but if the 2209 fails to Verify a Ritek 8x DVD+RW at any point other than the first 32 sectors, the drive drops communication with Windows. The Verify rate falls to 0.0x in ImgBurn and never resumes, ever. The only thing to do is power off the enclosure so ImgBurn can cancel. Powering it back on, though, resumes communication with the drive. All in all, Im still pretty pleased with this enclosure, despite some odd hiccups here and there. EDIT: 2018-08-28 - And, just a few days after my last update, Ive pretty much taken back everything I said positive about this drive. Its power supply just up and stopped working. No matter where its plugged into, the green light on the adapter doesnt light up anymore. So, the enclosure doesnt receive power to send to the drive. Effectively, it no longer works. This seemed promising, yet appears to be cheaply constructed. EDIT: 2018-08-30 - I do have to admit, Other World Computing does apparently provide excellent customer service. I began the process for returns/refund and they said since it seems to just be the power supply failing, theyd send me a replacement one. Sure beats my having to send back the entire product just for a failed power adapter. I may have to re-evaluate my number of stars again back up. EDIT: 2018-09-05 - I updated my rating to 3 stars because of the excellent customer service I got from Other World Computing. They did send me a replacement power supply free of charge and it worked. Ive also determined a few other things I was uncertain about this enclosure. I put the 2209 Pioneer BD drive in a different enclosure from another manufacturer and when a write failed to Verify on a DVD+RW, that enclosure also dropped communication with the drive. So, its not a quirk of this enclosure but of the 2209 Pioneer BD internal drive used in any enclosure.

Great when it works doesnt play some blue ray disks

It works and records all types of CD and DVDs, as well as some other discs that are rated to last a long, long, long time. VERY COOL. It is a USB plug-in unit, so I can use it on any/all of my computers. Excellent. Also, I said the Tech support was 5-star, but it has never needed tech support. I have had this for many years and I have had NO PROBLEMS. I wish that all electronics worked this way.

Works great just wish you guys made this for longer drives.

First, Im quite impressed with the build quality of this enclosure. it feels sturdy and well made overall. There is some drive compatibility issues, but they do warn you what size drives it will fit. I had a blu-ray reader/dvd burner drive and an actual bluray burner. The former fit in this enclosure pretty well. The holes on the side only aligned on one side due to the PCB size, but I got it in and it works great. The second drive was too long for this enclosure. If the PCB was about half the size on the inside, the drive would have fit. I would recommend that you measure your drives before purchasing. The USB cable is pretty short that is included, but the power cord is a decent length.

TLDR: Pros: Solid, good looking, and nice heavy feel All required hardware and cables included Recognized instantly and works (only tested with Linux) Cons: Provided USB 3 cable very short (about 2 feet) Dumb PCB engineering prevents most drives from fitting. The unit itself looks great and you could probably stand on it without ill effect. I took off one star because the case is very short inside because of a bad design choice. I know, the listing has inside length but theres really no reason for it to be that way. The outside of the case is 8.375 long and 8 inside but the stated inside space for the drive is 6.77. I bought it hoping my exactly 7 LG Bluray/DVD-RW would fit, and it barely did. Its against the printed circuit board (PCB) in the left corner and very slightly at an angle - enough so that I could only secure the drive on one side - and the bezel is not flush with the face of the case. All that is fine with me so Im keeping it. However, had they used a long narrow PCB instead of a 2x3 rectangle, or positioned the PCB vertically instead of horizontally the case would easily take a 7.5 drive. Really, a very poor design choice and for no benefit except maybe they saved a few cents in production by not having to produce a custom PCB. Just dumb for a product they charge almost $50 for. You could probably hack your way to a longer drive by removing the PCB and remounting it inside and threading the USB and power cable inside or move the PCB outside and thread the SATA cables inside. Obviously, you would need to enclose the PCB for the latter. The USB cable is a very nice heavy cable with ferrite beads (aka chokes - the round lump near the end of some cables) at both ends. But its only 2 feet long. Great for a laptop or computer on your desk but if your computer is on the floor in a tower, youll need probably need a longer cable unless your placement is very close. In case you need a longer cable, I attached a picture of the special end of the USB A:B cable youll need. The newer Superspeed USB 3 A:B cables arent as common as the older types so you may not have one in your box of cables like I did.

This enclosure is a very solid and hefty product. All of the eight drive screw slots have rubber grommets. It comes with rubber feet that screw on after the drive is inserted. My desk has a glass top and I was able to operate a bluray drive with almost no vibration of the enclosure. The enclose has a security slot for putting some cable in if you are installing this somewhere that needs it. The only part I didnt like was that the USB cable is comically short. For the price, would it have been too much to ask to give another few inches of USB cable? I think some of the sata cables inside my computer are longer than the cable for this drive. An enclosure like this makes a lot of sense if you still need to use an optical drive when more and more computer cases are not including slots for them anymore.