2.5" to 3.5" SATA hard drive slot-in adapter

thingiverse

I wanted to low-level erase and check some 2.5" SATA hard drives I had lying around, so I decided to perform an enhanced secure erase followed by a long S.M.A.R.T. check. Depending on your level of paranoia, you could also throw in some destructive bad block scan and wiping with random data. Although it's possible to do this via external USB enclosures, the connection wasn't solid for me, so I hooked it up to one of my internal SATA ports instead. Unfortunately, my PC's tray-less slide-in dock doesn't play well with 2.5" drives, so I needed an adapter to hold the drive in place while plugging it in. I browsed through Thingiverse and found a design for a 7mm hard drive adapter, but it wasn't suitable for my 9mm drive. The model consumed too much material, took a long time to print, and had poorly accessible screw holes. It also didn't fit all 2.5" models. With some extra time on my hands, I came up with this design: it's only 9mm tall but still rigid enough to hold the drive securely in place. The screw holes are fully accessible for a regular Philips screwdriver, and the design fits hard drives of all sizes without any issues. Note that there are no mounting holes on the frame for securing the caddy into a PC, as it's designed specifically for hard drive docks. The OpenSCAD file is available, so feel free to add mounting holes if needed.