Hard Drive Enclosures

I'm going to take the 40gb out of my burnt out desktop and convert it to an external for my notebook.

Anything I should know about enclosures? I know almost nothing except that my drive is 3.5". Is there one you guys would recommend?

Price is my primary concern so long as there's no major loss of function.

 

3.5" is pretty much all you need to know. Consider searching www.newegg.com or www.tigerdirect.ca

 

Will any of these run off of USB and not AC Adapter? They all seem to need add'l power.

 

No, 3.5" hard drives will need more power than what USB can supply so a seperate power adaptor is required. 1.8" and 2.5" (notebook hard drives) can run with USB only.

 

Make sure you get the right type of enclosure, you can get SATA enclosures as well as IDE enclosures.

 

Another e-SATA enclosures can support the external port if a mainboard comes with a connector on a back panel. It works similar to USB, but it has a different device.
Cheers

 

I found several 3.5" drives that claimed to have self power mode. Is this possible or not?

I already purchased one with said claim.

The main purpose of this drive will be to run a Virtual PC on it as I'm out of space on my drive and I heard they run better when each PC is on a seperate HDD. Will the USB transfer rates negate that performance gain?

 

link please?

when "they" say separate hard drive, they mean a separate internal drive (as in on a desktop). the usb will probably be a problem as virtualization software is already slow and unyieldy

 

Unless it runs on batteries... USB can supply upto 5 watts and desktop hard drives can consume anything from approximately 15-25 watts+.

I doubt their claims but I loved to proved wrong.

 

My Enclosure

It says it supports self-power mode. Several others said this as well. I don't really know what that means.

drumfu - i can certainly attest to the slowness of running a virtual pc. obviously a 2nd internal is ideal, but are you thinking that an external HDD will be worse than running both off of the same internal HDD?

 

yeah, i think it's going to be an exercise in frustration, but you never know. might as well try it and post your results; that way others can know whether it works or not

i don't think "self power" mode means no a/c

 

That self power mode sounds like a marketing gimmick. I don't know what it refers to but I also think it won't run without a/c power. The pictures clearly show a power adapter. If i had to venture a guess, I'd say the USB probably only provides enough power to run the fans in that enclosure.

 

Is there such a thing as a dual hard drive laptop? Does anyone make these?

 

Alienware is the only one that I know of(Pretty high priced) but there could be more --- don't know.

 

HP DV8000 series and DV9000 series also offer up to two internal harddrives - very reasonable prices.

 

The specs are for USB port power guys;

self-power mode(500ma per Port with Power Adapter),and one for bus-power mode(100mA per Port)

All 3.5” drives require 5VDC (and) 12VDC, impossible to achieve on one full powered 500ma USB port due to current restrictions.

As one poster said; you will need the AC/DC adapter.

Cheers

 

Well it could use a dual plug.

Uses the usb port and then it has a pass through plug that you use in a second port.

 

That's still 5VDC at 1amp Maybe with 6 500ma ports, a DC/DC inverter for the 12 VDC needed for the spindle...

Who knows, we might see low current 5v 3.5" drives down the road?