HD Enclosure Help

I've got 3 old HDs and they're just picking up dust, so I'd like to turn them into external HDs. From what I can gather on wikipedia I'll need a disk enclosure/caddy(?) -- anything else?.

I think the two 3.5" HDs have IDE ports and the one 2.5" HD has a SATA port, but I'm not completely sure about the latter. It was a week ago I checked.

I'm not sure about the physical sizes of these HDs either. The first two are from a desktop and the last one is from a laptop. I wasn't able to get more info on the last one because it was covered by stickers and I can't power on the laptop. The three HDs are the following:

Is there anything I should look for in disk enclosures?

Thanks

 

I would forget about putting the IDE drives in an enclosure. There's a chance of failure if they're old and you don't know their status, and the enclosures won't have future use. A 500GB external SATA usb 2.0 hard drive will cost around $60, while two IDE enclosures will probably run around $20-40 together shipped, and net you 240GB.

I'd suggest considering buying an adapter that can do SATA and 2.5" and 3.5" PATA, and run those drives bare.

 

I agree with woofer00.

If these are to be used for backup, instead of a single 500GB external, I suggest at least 2 of them and back up the same data to both/all (using something like MS's SyncToy).

Good luck.

 

They're all quite old and the first two are from my first computer, so I was primarily interested in seeing what files are still lurking in the HDs. But if I could get three extra external HDs out of them at a reasonable cost, great.

One of the two desktop HDs probably doesn't spin anymore as I remember having to take in the tower with one internal HD and leaving with two.

I think I'll go with the adapter. I hadn't even thought of that.

Any suggestions on the adapter? Will any do?

 

See:
Newegg.com - BYTECC BT-300 USB 2.0 to IDE/SATA Adapter

Good luck.

 

I use Newegg.com - APRICORN ADW-USB-KIT IDE/PATA/SATA to USB HDD Adapter, but that was when the prices were somewhat comparable (it was on sale) and I had a stronger aversion to Bytecc.

 

I like the IDE- and SATA-to-USB 2.0 adapter idea.

USB 2.0 is slower than the drives are, but they are not all that large, so it shouldn't take too long to transfer the contents to a fourth drive.

For that fourth drive, I suggest a prebuilt external HDD. 500 GB is cheaper, but a 1 TB unit is more economical in $-per-gigabyte. 2 TB and 3 TB units are more economical still, but do get pricey in absolute terms.

Avoid the newer Western Digital MyBook externals. These perform silent, mandatory hardware encryption, which means that if the enclosure ever breaks, your data is toast. And the MyBook enclosures do break. Mine worked for precisely one day.

You may also wish to "roll your own" external HDD, by purchasing a suitable large SATA hard drive and enclosure separately. This costs a little more than buying a preassembled unit, but you have more choices (e.g. you can get an enclosure that combines USB 3.0 and eSATA, like the Zalman HE-350-U3E*).

*I'm a little biased, because I just bought a Zalman HE-350-U3E and I love it to pieces.

 

Thank you all for your help.

One last question before you start throwing tomatoes at me. What do you think of the WD 2TB external? I haven't got more details on it as I don't have it with me right now, but I could update my post later on. I bought it acouple of months ago because I needed to move some files off my computer within the day. I basically just went in the store and picked up the cheapest one for the most GB.

 

On a per GB basis, it's probably a decent deal. Personally, I dislike backing up everything to one location, no matter how cheap, because if that one spot fails, you lose too much.