External enclosure setup how to

[loga8n]

hi, i only have a toshiba a505 laptop which has run out of storage space, i have no desktop
i was wondering how to set up an external enclosure,
i am currently looking at this enclosure
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817173043

and will also get an 1.5tb internal hd, dont know which one yet,
but my question is can i put the internal hard drive into the enclosure, then reformat the drive to make it work
or does the internal hd need to be reformat inside from a desktop?
i am new at this stuff and not that tech savy
i would appreciate any help, thanks.

 

[RetiredChief]

Yes, that one will work for a 3 1/2 in HDD.
The best option is to plug it into the esata port on the side of your laptop (verify that you infact do have a esata port, Believe the A505 does, I have the A305-xxxxx.
esata is much faster than the USB port. From there you should be able to go into disk manager and partition/format the drive. I have that enclosure w/1 TB segate drive. use NTFS, not fat to format drive.

 

[loga8n]

thanks for the fast reply
yes my laptop has an esata port
so all i have to do is put the hard drive into the enclosure, connect via usb/esata, format drive to ntsf
then it should work,
i also wonder can i run the operating system or boot from external enclosure, or backup my laptop hd image to external enclosure, instead of just using it as storage drive?
well if not thanks anyways, newegg has some nice deals with this hard drive
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822152185

thanks again

 

[RetiredChief]

Have a friend who boots to a USB thumb drive (has Linx OS on it). But Myself Have not set up esata/usb boot drive - so no help there.

If running windows 7, Win 7 has a good "backup program". You can (1) create an image file and place it on your external drive and (2) create a boot CD/DVD to recover and re-install the Image onto the main HDD should you replace it or to recover froma a failure. If Not Win 7, then there are some 3rd party programs that will also do this.

 

[loga8n]

Best answer selected by loga8n.