Porch Enclosure

My laptop died. I can still hear the hard drive spin and I want the data that’s stored on it. I’m looking to buy a external hdd enclosure but all I see is sata enclosures. I’m not too big on tech so I’ve no idea wtf. I mean when it comes to enclosures are ata and data drives the same thing? Would my ata drive work on a sata hdd enclosure.

Your ATA laptop hard drive can be put into an external enclosure, but not a STA enclosure. You need an ATA enclosure for a 2.5" hard drive.

http://www.amazon.com/Aluminum-External-Drive-Enclosure-Capacity/dp/B0035MO470
http://www.amazon.com/External-Portable-2-5-inch-Enclosure-Laptop/dp/B002AQ5DC2
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=1086960&CatId=2781

I have an old laptop hdd - seagate momentus 4200

i want to use it as an external drive. what type of external enclosure will be compatible with the hdd’s interface?
I counted the pins on the back and it has 22 columns and on the 13th column there is only one pin. All the others have 2.

There are also 2 additional columns of 2 for jumpers. These were not included in the count above.

your enclosure would be like this
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817182145

plugs into usb, and does not require a power plug, if it was 3.5 inch desktop drive then it does require a power plug.
Internal Interface: IDE (i asume that is what the 4200 rpm drive is)
there is also sata.
you can tell them apart easily ide has a whackful of little pins where the connectors connect,
where sata does not.

I have an Intel 40Gb SSD and I am wondering if I can use it in a USB 2.5" external enclosure. I don’t want to use it as a boot drive, just to hold programs to carry for install onto other systems. Thanks.
@Shukui: All SSDs are SATA…and it will be great when some USB 3 externals come out.

As long as your enclosure is SATA compatible, there is absolutely no reason why you can’t use an SSD in an external enclosure, the let down will be write and read performance because if it’s over USB 2.0 your limited to the specifications of the standard although if you have the ability to use eSATA you will definitely get more speed out of it although regardless you will never see the true power of an SSD while it’s external.

I have a hard drive from my broken laptop that I have moved over into an HDD external enclosure but can not access my files.
I have moved a hard drive from a broken laptop to and external enclosure and I can not seem to access the files on it. I have connected it via USB and the external enclosure displays power. The PC also detects that hardware is attached.

1) When you plug it in does the drive get found by the operating system (new hardware found etc) ? If not then check all the connections.
2) If they seem ok try on another computer.
3) go to the mycompute>manage>disk manager plug in and see if you can see the disk from there, if you can then right click on it and select open.

I asked a question heard and someone suggest me to get a External Enclosure.

Question: What is a External Enclosure and what does it do?
I read that you can put a hard drive that have info in it and be able to read what is inside the hard drive

Check out for more Tips & Tricks in the Below Mentioned Blog.

I don’t believe I have any interior SATA cables and am using a new hard drive I just bought fresh out of package. I know I have to setup a partition but is there a way to do it in an external enclosure that I already own(and was planning on using to run the drive)?

I tried plugging it in and firing it up and it recognizes its a Mass storage device but cannot access it.

After connecting external HDD, go to Disk Management in Computer Management in Windows. The external drive should show up in lower right portion of Computer Management window. Right click on the drive and you will have the options to partition and format the drive. Once formatted and assigned a volume label, it should show up in upper right part as additional drive(s).

Is it just like a case for your external hard-drive? Does it do anything extra that the external hdd can’t do without it?
Oh i probably should have wikied this lol.

It has the circuitry in it that enables USB or Esata to power up and run the hard drive, and also provides protection from elements and people with peanut butter on their fingers.

You could run the hard drive outside the case, but you would have to connect it to the cables inside, including the power cable, and then, the drive would just be hanging and in the way.

So the case is not just a case, it has a small circuit board inside and a special plug to match the hard drive (IDE or SATA), so if you bought a case, it would have to match the hard drive plugs, IDE or SATA
And the case makes wiping the peanut butter off easier.

I took out the hard drive from my old apple computer. it is an maxtor Model # 5T060H6 60GB heard drive. I would like to use it as a external hard drive. I think this model is a Ultra-ATA. What type of external enclosure or dock or any way to access the Hard drive would you recommend.

I do not want to spend too much money because i already have a large external hard drive.

thank you

I believe the cheapest way would be to get a USB to IDE adapter and power supply.
See the link posted in the sources below.

I can’t sell the xbox, which is the obvious thing to do, even though I have no intention of ever putting it back together if I can use the hard drive. Please don’t even ask why. I have an empty external enclosure, but I don’t want to open up the xbox to see if it is compatible unless I know it will work. I assume someone has already done this and has the answer.

yep, its just a regular 5400rpm 3.5" drive in there

The problem is that the hard drive is actually from a external western digital hard drive 500gb My Book series, and its hard drive enclosure messed up. I don’t have any more warranty on it, so I was thinking of just buying a enclosure for the hard drive. I just don’t know which one to buy, and is compatible with Western Digital. Can someone please help me out.

The only thing you’ll need to know is what connection interface the drive has. Crack it open and look. It’ll have a connector with 4 large pins for power, and either a set of pins with a (usually grey) 2 inch wide cable sticking out, or a smaller cable about 1 inch wide. If it’s the wide cable get an external drive with IDE support, if ti’s the 1 inch wide cable then get a SATA compatible external drive. Pictures of both cables are easily found on images.google.com.