Converting Internal HD to External USB HD?

hello,

I just recently bought my first ever laptop (inspiron 1520), abandoning my desktop. Well I hastily took apart my desktop computer, and am just left with the parts.

I've been reading that I could salvage the internal HD and use it as an external usb 2.0 HD for my laptop, by using an HD enclosure (looking at the Vantec NexStar 3). Is this true? Will this suffice for my needs?

My main problem is that I have files on the HD that i didn't back up, and of course there's still Windows XP on there. Also I don't have a case or know how to reassemble the my comp to do a backup and format of the hd. Would I be able to run this hd on my laptop without doing a format? Also what would happen with the drive considering my laptop is Vista, and on the HD is XP?


Please help!

 

oh and i think my internal HD is a 3.5 Seagate 80GB Ultra ATA 5400rpm 8mb cache?

 

You can make it into an external USB HD yes.

If you just put the HD into the enclosure, make sure you put the jumper at the back to make it not be the bootable drive. When you connect it to your notebook, you will be able to see your HD content on that HD but not the OS.

 

Cori is correct! It's very very easy to take any HDD and plunk it into an enclosure for backup/data use etc. I've upgraded systems a few times and always keep the old drives as backups. I don't even format them, on the off chance I need the OS to get at a dying drive, or something like that.

And while you should set the drive as a slave, most laptops won't even let you boot from a USB drive unless you activate the option in the BIOS (if there even is the option!) anyway.

 

Yeap, but somethings if you don't set it as slave, your notebook may not even be able to recognize it, though that may only be the case for older IDE Hard Drives.

 

cool! thanks for the quick replies. So is this as easy as plug and play? Pretty much I'll be able to access all the files on the HD? Like it would just show up as F: drive or sumthin like that, such as a usb key?

also what kind of speed are we looking at? will it be faster than a usb flash memory key?

 

depends on the flash memory and its speeds, but noone uses usb hard drives for their speeds, the usb speed limitations are ur bottleneck.

itll show up just like ur hard drive shows up which is similar to how ur usb key would too, just a normal drive.

 

For 3.5" hard drives, they will require an A/C adapter, but generally, yes, its plug and play.

It will show up as a drive letter. As for speeds, it'll be USB 2.0 so it'll write pretty qucikly, but if you want faster there are firewire and eSATA solutions as well.