Porch Enclosure

When my laptop broke down I transfered the hard drive into the enclosure thinking I would be able to get the data, but my new laptop wouldn’t recognise the hard drive. I thought maybe it was because there was 2 platforms or something. But my friends laptop broke down and I put his hard drive into the enclosure and it worked! it opened up as another drive and he was able to retrieve all his data.
the only difference that I can think off is in my hard drive I used a password to access my account; my friend never had a password.Any ideas on how to get my hard drive to open?
Will I have to boot it from the external drive at the beginning so I can sign in and remove the password?

See if perhaps your hard drive is configured as a Master drive; it is possible the old and new drives are both configured as Master and therefore the one in the laptop is dominant.

I don’t know about laptop drives, but in regular PC drives, there is a jumper setting to make it a Master or a Slave. Check you drive for the jumpers.

I have a 320gb hard drive, and i need to find a near store location like walmart or radioshack..

You can order one online from Radioshack and they will ship it to your store for free pickup.

I have this Seagate hard drive(250gb, SATA, 3.5") from my old, broken computer , and I am trying to use this as an external drive for extra storage. However, I am not sure which one to get, a converter(Sata to usb or esata) or an enclosure with a fan, to connect the drive to my new computer. Any ideas??

If you’re going to connect that one drive and leave it connected, an enclosure. If you have a lot of drives and change which one is connected, a cable adapter. (The electronics are the same, but it makes more sense to keep the drive in an enclosure if you’re not going to keep swapping drives.)

i found an old maxtor diamondmax 21 200gb(i think its a discontinued model) hard drive from a computer I don’t use and want to make it into a external hard drive, but i have no clue what enclosure i need to get. can someone figure out what one and give me a link to it?

You need a 3.5 IDE Hard Drive Enclosure, you can get them cheap at Ebay, everywhere else they are pretty expensive. Something like this would work nicely

http://cgi.ebay.com/BLACK-3-5-USB-2-0-External-IDE-Hard-Drive-Enclosure_W0QQitemZ190263880520QQcmdZViewItem?hash=item190263880520&_trkparms=72%3A1234%7C39%3A1%7C66%3A2%7C65%3A12%7C240%3A1318&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14

http://cgi.ebay.com/3-5-External-HDD-Hard-Drive-Disk-Enclosure-USB-2-0-IDE_W0QQitemZ400005191516QQcmdZViewItem?hash=item400005191516&_trkparms=72%3A1234%7C39%3A1%7C66%3A2%7C65%3A12%7C240%3A1318&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14

Either of those would work perfectly and come with everything you need. Goodluck

I have a Firewire external hard drive (portable size) with a damaged port but I believe the drive itself is fine. I’m wondering if I can somehow crack it out of the enclosure it came with and put it into a new USB case. I imagine there would be a power issue of some sort but any expertise would be appreciated. Thanks!

More than likely it is a SATA hard drive. As long as the USB external hard drive enclosure you are going to use is SATA as well then you should be fine. You’ll know because it only plugs in one way.

My computer recently stopped working, so I took it to Staples and they said it was essentially dead, but the could retrieve the data and they put it in an external hard drive (an acomdata, 3.5" hard drive enclosrure).
But the problem lies in trying to open it. I’m operating on XP, my computer knows it’s there because when I plug it in it makes a noise, but I can’t seem to find it anywhere. It won’t let me install the software because it says I don’t need it.
And the "safely remove hardware" icon was in the tray but when I opened that, there’s nothing there.

Also whatever’s inside is rattling around, is that good?

Does anyone have any ideas, I really want to get my files off it!

Thanks in advance!

First, I would make sure the USB port was working.
Start,
Settings
Control Panel
System
Hardware
Device Manager
See if you can find the port - right-click on it and selece Properties
if the port is working o.k. –

were you using the port for anything else before plugging in the external hard drive?
I found out that that after "safely remove," sometimes the PC will not accept another USB device.

Here is the article on that:
Problem With USB Port – Can’t Reinstall USB Device – Plug & Play Problem
- With Windows Plug & Play feature, Windows is supposed to recognize any device plugged into a USB port — the problem is after it recognizes something once, Plug & Play will never again try to install that device. You need to erase all memory of the device (printer etc) from the computer.
- Right-click on My Computer, cl Properties, click Hardware, click Device Manager.
- Click on the plus sign next to “Universal Serial Bus.” Look for the problem device’s name and right-click. Now Remove. Restart and reinstall.

Source: Article by James Coates, Chicago Tribune.
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Personal Notes:
1. I found that if I did not go through the “safely remove” procedure before unplugging a USB device, the computer did not recognize another item. I had to reinsert the first item, “safely remove,” then plug in another item. This must be like shutting down for USBs.
2. Some flashdrives are to be removed at shutdown, and reinserted after startup. This is stated on the literature that accompanied my SONY 1G flashdrive. I do not recall seeing this instruction for my Cruzer 1G, but I suspect it is the same. I found that if I leave it connected, I cannot access files. After removing it and reinserting, files are there. A couple other smaller, older flashdrives do not seem to have this problem.
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You may have to temporarily uninstall whatever you were previously using on that port.

Hi, I have an 80GB Seagate hard disk that I have bought at most two years ago and I bought a hard disk enclosure as well. Just about two months ago, it started acting up - it wasn’t being recognised by my comp. I have a new laptop now and it still doesn’t work like it’s supposed to. My comp recognizes it as a USB Mass Storage Device but the hard drive doesn’t appear. When I try to access Device Manager my comp freezes and when I unplug the device from the usb port, my comp goes back to normal.

I have searched the web for numerous forums that may give me an idea as to how I can solve this problem. This motivated me to buy a new hard drive enclosure. However, doing this did not solve my problem.

Now, when I plug the hard disk enclosure, my comp reads the enclosure but when it starts to install the hard disk, I get a blue screen with a "physical memory dump error". I don’t know what to do know. I have important data in my hard drive that’s why I want to recover it.

Help please?

you might need to format your external drive so it can jive with your new system.

If I connect the external hard disk case (with the Windows 98 hard disk in it) to a Windows XP laptop, will I be able to use the Win 98 hard disk drive as if it was in the original PC, i.e. can I use all the software (including such as internet connection programmes) as before or can I only use the data files ? Thanks.

If you can set the laptop (in the BIOS) to boot from the USB external HDD it might get somewhere (try safe mode). But you will definately be able to read your data files off it as Windows XP can read FAT32 (Win98) drives.

The original casing of my external drive was badly damaged. Can I remove the drive and put it into an enclosure designed for hard drives?

Yes, it’s just a regular hd, you can even put it into a pc.

Installation of a Runcore Pro IV Zif SSD into the provided external enclosure. Takes about 30 seconds!

Duration : 0:0:44

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