Hard Drive Enclosures

ge_rik

ge_rik

British narrow gauge (esp. Southwold and W&LLR)
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I realise that this is probably Old Hat for many of you, but just in case it isn't.
I've just invested in a couple of hard drive enclosures/caddies for drives taken out of redundant laptop computers:
DSCI3620.JPG

They cost me the princely sum of £5.99 each (inc postage) from a UK seller on eBay
Clear USB 3.0 SATA External Hard Drive Case 2.5 Inch Enclosure Caddy HDD SSD 5060385645055 | eBay

It's usually dead easy to extract the hard drive from a laptop - 2 - 4 screws holding a flap on the underside of the laptop and the drive unclips. I'd suggest doing this anyway before dumping any old computer. It's then simply a case of slotting the drive into the caddy, replacing the lid and plugging the USB lead into the back of it - et voila, one external hard drive (assuming of course that the reason the laptop failed wasn't because the hard drive had failed!).

I've been able to extract some music and photo files off the drives before reformatting them - though I'll not save anything critical on them in case they give up the ghost.

To my mind, it's worth the investment of £6.00!

Rik
PS - The most difficult part was trying to figure out how the lid comes off the caddy - it slides to the back - the lid is uppermost when the electronic components are facing downwards - as in the photo
 
Rik a great idea, just be aware that there are 6 different interfaces out there (and some antiquated ones no longer used), 2.5" HDD for laptops 3.5" HDD for desktops, and depending on age these could be IDE, SATA II or SATA III (6gb). So it will pay to ensure you know what HDD you have :)
Doesn't detract for a great idea :)
 
Greg Elmassian said:
Do you mean a sata to usb adapter? (how related?)
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Yep! If you look at the original photo and text, the caddies I bought include SATA to USB adapters - the USB lead plugs into the back of the caddy and then straight into a USB port on the computer.

Rik
 
Yeah, unfortunately, our needs for storage go up almost at the same pace... 80 gigs is what a lot of windows 7 pc's were shipped with, very few computers ship with less than 1 TB.

My new laptop has 8 cores and 32 gig ram and TWO one terabyte SSD drives, and they are NVE, not SATA

Oh well... sometimes long for a simpler life.
 
ge_rik said:
Yep! If you look at the original photo and text, the caddies I bought include SATA to USB adapters - the USB lead plugs into the back of the caddy and then straight into a USB port on the computer.

Rik
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Yeah, the small notebook drives can run from the 500 ma of a USB port I have several of these dongles, but not super fast.

Greg
 
The enclosure? I bit my tongue on the initial post. Have a number of large drives for archiving, but I have 4 that service 14 computers. One large drive for external backup (like a 4 TB) makes sense... copy all your old junk off your old drives and scrap them. If they are big enough to archive backups, then keep it and use it for that, but I suspect it is too small.

I don't have enough fingers and toes for the friends I have that saved hard drives until they (the drive and the data) was worthless.

Of course I have the same situation counting the number of people who don't backup their computers.

I have a bankers box of 500 gig and up drives, maybe 15 of them... I use them as the hard drives crap out in my CCTV systems (that is DVR for the USA people)...

Greg
 
Greg Elmassian said:
The enclosure? I bit my tongue on the initial post. Have a number of large drives for archiving, but I have 4 that service 14 computers. One large drive for external backup (like a 4 TB) makes sense... copy all your old junk off your old drives and scrap them. If they are big enough to archive backups, then keep it and use it for that, but I suspect it is too small.

I don't have enough fingers and toes for the friends I have that saved hard drives until they (the drive and the data) was worthless.

Of course I have the same situation counting the number of people who don't backup their computers.

I have a bankers box of 500 gig and up drives, maybe 15 of them... I use them as the hard drives crap out in my CCTV systems (that is DVR for the USA people)...

Greg
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What the hell do you have 14 computers for; you going into competition with Google? ;)
;););)
 
We have five 'computers', at the bungalow.. Though you might not think of the Smartie-Phones, as computers?

Two phones, two laptops, Mum's old desktop..
Then there is a NAS-device in the workshop. - The other one, is in the garage, back at Tamworth..
There are more computers, still to come over, but these are dedicated to machinery.

Much of the data is also backed up 'off-site', but the cost of this is becoming an issue..
Once we are fully aware settled here, the workshop being a separate building, I may cease the off-site stuff, except for the Googley bit for the Smartie-Phone?

Life is too short, to mess with mobile phone backup!
 
PhilP said:
We have five 'computers', at the bungalow.. Though you might not think of the Smartie-Phones, as computers?

Two phones, two laptops, Mum's old desktop..
Then there is a NAS-device in the workshop. - The other one, is in the garage, back at Tamworth..
There are more computers, still to come over, but these are dedicated to machinery.

Much of the data is also backed up 'off-site', but the cost of this is becoming an issue..
Once we are fully aware settled here, the workshop being a separate building, I may cease the off-site stuff, except for the Googley bit for the Smartie-Phone?

Life is too short, to mess with mobile phone backup!
Click to expand...
I really can't talk I have 4.
2 lapppies, a desktop running Linux and another running XP the last 2 are in the shed for trains and both have 1TB HDDS attached and are on a micro network both HDDs hold the same info.
I don't count the smart phones (they are only used for Flu QR code check in) or SWMBO's tablet (used for bookface and playing a game)
 
You can talk just fine, I'm an extreme case (all my friends say so ha ha!)

But backing up every so often is good insurance. My backup schedule varies from instant (critical data files stored locally and in cloud automatically with dropbox), to weekly for heavy use computers to every 4 months for computers that do surfing for visitors and that program decoders.

I use a great free software called Macrium Reflect, from the UK, and I do image backups, i.e. can restore the entire disk and operating system, not just some data files. Re-installing an operating system is no fun.

Greg
 
Greg Elmassian said:
I use a great free software called Macrium Reflect, from the UK, and I do image backups, i.e. can restore the entire disk and operating system, not just some data files. Re-installing an operating system is no fun.

Greg
Click to expand...
I used the paid version, it has a little more usability, and works for me, but the free one was where I started, I backup my photos to Amazon Prime (as they change/get added) automatically, no extra charge about the Prime subscription.
 
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