2.5" SATA HDD External Enclosure - Insulation?

polybear

Hi all,
I want to put a 2.5" SATA HDD into an external enclosure. I've done this before - the enclosure in that instance was plastic. However, they all seem to be aluminium lately (I'm trying to do it as cheaply as possible, with Ebay being the order of the day...).

However, my HDD (in common with most) has a bare PCB visible on one side. So are the Aluminium enclosures insulated inside to prevent shorting of the HDD? Or is there another option?

Many thanks.

polybear

debitcardmayhem

I have recently bought two metal (icybox enclosures expensive but I wanted usb 3) but they have no insulators inside but they certainly don't short either.

cookie365

If you look carefully at the bottom of the drive you'll see that the PCB isn't flush with the bottom of the drive case. So it wont touch the bottom of the enclosure.

Nilrem

Aye the PCB on the drive is designed to fit inside of the outer casing of the drive.
A lot of laptops use some form of metal tray to hold the drive in place (it's easier to make a removable tray that the drive screws into, and have that slide into a slot on the laptop than have the drive screw directly in).