Disk enclosure - Definition and Overview

A disk enclosure is a computer storage device designed to contain disk drives. The term is normally used to differentiate such a device from a more advanced disk array which contains a controller and supports RAID. Therefore, a disk enclosure is a simple container, sometimes with a power supply, but very little intelligence.

Many disk enclosures are small portable devices that use USB, FireWire, or a special external version of Serial ATA to connect to a computer. In enterprise storage, the term normally refers to a device which can hold a number of disk drives (normally 4 or more) and which communicates with a server using the SCSI or fibre channel protocols.