Akasa Integral S 3.5″ External USB3.0 Hard Drive Enclosure Review

The Integral S comes in an option of two colours, the glossy black as we have here and also an all silver design. The first thing you may find when taking the enclosure out of the box is that it’s quite weighty when empty, but this comes down to the Aluminium shell that makes up the bulk of the body. Either end has a plastic cap with a chrome like trim around the edge.

On the underside of the enclosure, there are four small rubber feet, two at either end for when the drive is used in a horizontal orientation. Also on the front of the drive is the IntegralS branding which lights up when the drive is on and connected.

Round on the end of the enclosure, we find the USB3.0 jack, DC power jack, On/Off switch and to either side of these two screws for opening the drive up, this part we will come onto shortly.

As you will have noted from the first part of this page, the drive comes with a footstand for positioning the drive on its side.  The enclosure simply slots into this stand and easily pulls out again. The clear footstand has four rubber feet on the base to reduce any resonant vibrations when running.

With the screws removed, the inner tray slides right out of the enclosure, remaining connected by a single cable which connects the PCB to the light on the front of the enclosure.  Fitting the drive is as simple as pushing it onto the SATA headers and securing it on both sides with the included screws. The whole unit then slots back together ready for use. I will point out that when looking to buy a drive for this enclosure, there is a capacity limit of 2TB and installing drives larger than this can cause the enclosure to mis-detect the drives capacity and work, if at all.