Sup folks. I bought one of these--http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6817392013-- thinking that I could get data off my dead laptop hard drive. It didn't work so now I'm stuck with the enclosure.

I like the idea of SSD, and I'm wondering what the life-expectancy of those are. I just want to put something in the enclosure so I can save documents on it and maybe some graphic design work (although I can use CDs and DVDs for those). I want to write a book and save it in the enclosure. I want the drive to last almost forever, or at least much longer than a regular hard drive would. I'm sick of dying laptop hard drives. I've only suffered through one but that's enough, I lost maybe 80% of my work up to 2006 in that stupid laptop hard drive.

It would have to be an IDE unless there are very small SATA-to-IDE adapters that can be wedged between a very small SATA drive and the IDE socket. <--Probably unlikely.

I would be willing to spend maybe 100-bucks on this SSD (or similar) drive. I just want something I can write documents to and carry it around with me. That would be neat.

I know y'alls are busy and if I really cared I would do some research, but I also know you are experts with opinions of your own, so please help me decide what to do I don't need much space on the drive either.

SSD is very expensive right now. About $800.00 for a 32GB drive.

You need to establish a good backup program. You can buy a hard drive, put it in that enclosure and only use it when you need it. Nothing is eternal, but it should last you a long time. Eventurally you can copy the data to a computer and upgrade the external hard drive.

The warranties on flash drives and hard drives are found on their packaging.

Flash drives can last ten years or more but nothing is guaranteed. Right now hard drives are cheaper per megabyte and larger than what is affordable but hard drives have moving parts whereas flash drives don't. And the longest warranty you may find on some hard drives is five years. The current flash memory is baked and may survive being left in a hot car but then again, I don't know how hot a car could reach and I can't guarantee anything.

I'm sorry your case didn't work but you can always find another one that will.

I bought a case for $20 and filled it with a $40 dollar hard drive. You don't have to get the most or the best but if you have a couple of backups then you have alternatives. Tigerdirect, New Egg and Chief Value as well as other online places (Weird Stuff) have deals and sometimes you can even find other deals in the paper.

I have a few CD's that went bad and I have a lot of floppies that went bad so I'm not opposed to DVD's and CD's but I use flash drives and hard drives.

What storage should I put in this enclosure besides a conventional hard disk? I want something that will last foreverrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr (and be IDE)

I'm thinking of one of these: http://www.dotcomrecycling.com/cat [...] H_IDE.html