Best external hard drive enclosures?

So, I was just wondering—if I grab one of those external drive enclosures and the box says it supports SATA drives, can I actually toss a SATAII drive in there, or am I stuck only using the old-school SATA I stuff?

If we're talking about a standard 3.5" hard drive, maybe this is the way to go:

Using drives with jumpers

that way you've got both standards covered...

Nah, I'm actually talking about a 2.5-inch drive here... what I'm really trying to wrap my head around is if the enclosure absolutely has to be SATAII if the drive itself is SATAII, or if it can just be a general one that supports SATA drives regardless of the specific version?

Look, speaking purely from my experience messing around with 3.5" hard drives: it all really comes down to the built-in SATA controller. You basically need it to support SATA II, otherwise the drive might not even show up, or it’ll just act super glitchy. Back in the day, we usually had to fix that stuff with a jumper. It used to be a common headache with those early-gen motherboards using older controllers, but honestly, plenty of older rigs floating around now handle SATA II drives without breaking a sweat.

You’re probably gonna have to Google the specific enclosure you've got there—I'm assuming it's an external case?—because the controller and the USB bridge chip are tucked right inside that thing.