I need some help with making an External Hard Drive

Hi, since i got my laptop (Acer Aspire 5112WLMi), i've found my old computer pretty much useless, i would take the ram and dvd burner and put it into my sisters computer. so now, the 160 GB HDD on my laptop is almost full and i need more storage so i took the hard drive out and was wondering if i could use this to make an External Hard Drive by just buying an enclosure for it. the hard drive is an 80 GB Samsung SV8004H/TGM. would i be able to do it? and what enclousures would u recomend me that aren't too expensive as i'll probally end up buying an even bigger hard drive and enclosure for my ever growing collection of media. thanks guys in advance

 

I'd say search Newegg for something that holds a 2.5" drive, and gets a solid review. Most products get decent reviews, but read users' opinions to see if people are finding flaws.

If this is something you want running most of the time, get one with a cooling fan built in.

Also, one nice idea is making a NAS (network attached storage) enclosure. This will allow you to serve this drive on your network, so you don't have to be connected via USB all the time to access it.

Brand name for enclosures isn't a huge deal. Just make sure to look for flaws that other users have experienced.

 

Actually, its not 2.5", it is 3.5" You would need to get an 3.5" enclosure.

JC

 

ok thanks, i've decided on my enclousure that's a 3.5 which is the proper size? so after i put it in and connect it to USB to my laptop, how do i format it? it still has my operating system and everything from my old computer on nit

 

Right click on the My Computer icon and select Manage. Then choose disk management. The external HDD should show up as disk 1. You can then select a partition on that disk and format it.

John