Suggestion Please

[sparker781]

Hey all

I need to find me an external enclosure to fix some of my clients hard drives and it also needs to handle some PC hard drives as well. Can someone recommend a brand since I don't know whats good or not when it comes to these

Thanks

 

[enzo matrix]

It's a very simple circuit, relatively speaking. Get the cheapest. But make sure it has the interface you need (ie, SATA if your drives are sata, IDE if your drives are IDE and the 2.5" notebook IDE if you have a 2.5" drive)

fix some of my clients hard drives and it also needs to handle some PC hard drives as well
Clients for what? How would their hard drives be different from any other "PC hard drives"?

 

[sparker781]

I have clients that have desktop and notebook hard drives that need stuff to get off of....Thats why I'm looking for an enclosure that can handle both types of drives

 

[enzo matrix]

I have clients that have desktop and notebook hard drives that need stuff to get off of....Thats why I'm looking for an enclosure that can handle both types of drives

If they are SATA, then the interface is the same for both notebook and desktop drives.
If they are IDE (the older parallel drives) you will have to get one for each, as the IDE notebook drives have smaller pins not compatible with the desktop drive interface.

 

[hellwig]

You can get one of these:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...ATCH&Description=usb+ide+sata+adapter&x=0&y=0

I have a USB 2.0 IDE/SATA adapter and it works pretty well. Of course, its USB 2.0 so data transfers can take some time. Some are now coming in USB 3.0.

You could also get one of these if you wanted:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...CH&Description=esata+ide+sata+adapter&x=0&y=0

These have USB and esata external connectors, and many come with both IDE and SATA internal connectors. The only issue is that you won't really be able to mount a 2.5inch laptop drive in a 2.5 inch enclosure (but you don't really need to anyway, as long as the SATA connectors line up).

If you work only with 2.5" and 3.5" SATA drives, you could get a dock like this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...BESTMATCH&Description=hard+drive+dock&x=0&y=0



With hard drives though, you could have problems with smaller connectors. 2.5inch IDE drives use a 44-pin power/data connector which does not fit a normal 40-pin IDE connector. But there are adapters for that:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...ide_adapter_2.5_to_3.5-_-12-200-053-_-Product
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...ide_adapter_2.5_to_3.5-_-12-203-012-_-Product
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...ide_adapter_2.5_to_3.5-_-12-119-245-_-Product

Finally, 1.8inch SATA drives use a smaller SATA connector, and I'm not sure where you get an adapter for those. This can be a problem with netbooks which tend to use 1.8" drives.

 

[sparker781]

I went with this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817182196&cm_re=hard_drive_dock-_-17-182-196-_-Product

 

[sparker781]

Best answer selected by sparker781.

 

[Mousemonkey]

This topic has been closed by Mousemonkey