Need to look into some old hard drives, erase, pull data, whatever. Wondering how to go about that.

plug them in to your current system? or use an external hard drive caddy

Never heard of a hard drive caddy but will check that out at a computer store today.................

well my words are confuddled a little... more commonly they are called external USB enclosure

If they are SATA drives you could try this:

http://www.pcclub.com/product_deta [...] o=A0011830

For IDE hard drives you can use this:

http://www.pcclub.com/product_deta [...] o=A1306014

Thanks for the links. I pulled out two hard drives and they call themselves "Enhanced IDE Hard Drives" Western Digital term I guess. Didn't know there were two kinds of hard drives. Going to NewEgg and try and get a better price but really appreciate your help.................

Enhanced IDE, or "EIDE" drives, are just a later version of the general group of ATA drives. So they can be connected to your system using the common 40-pin flat ribbon cables (whether they have 40 or 80 wires in them) to a Primary or Secondary IDE connector on the mobo. These are the cables with two drive connectors on them. Of course, you also need a 4-pin Molex power connction, too. The drive itself will have a small jumper block for setting whether it is Master or Slave on this channel, plus a diagram on the drive case for which pins to put the jumper on. Set the jumper to match up whatever else is on that channel - e.g., if you already have one drive on the cable and one empty connector, then ensure the existing drive is jumpered for Master (or Master with Slave present) and set the new one to be a Slave.

On most systtems you'll have to boot into the BIOS setup screens (often by holding down the "Del" key while booting) , go into the first option sub-menu, and tell it that you now have a new hard drive attached as Master or Slave on the Primary or Seconday IDE channel (as appropriate). Usually you can then set it to auto-detect the correct drive use parameters, save and exit your new settings, and it will reboot and find your drive so you can use it.

Mounting the drive instead in a USB-connected external case may well be simpler. I expect you'll have to set the drive's jumper to Master before connecting it into the case, and you will have to load a driver for the external unit - follow the case supplier's instructions on this, using any software disk supplied. Any external case can do it. Look for these factors:
1. You want USB (probably USB2) conncetion between computer and external case.
2. You want a case that takes an IDE or ATA drive, not as SATA drive.
3. The case probably comes with its own power brick to avoid drawing all its power from the USB port.
4. You likely do not need an expensive case with a cooling fan built in, but you can get that if you want to.

Thanks for the reply. Did order a external HD case with power cord, USB connector, IDE style and no cooling fan from NewEgg.