external hdd enclousre for laptop hdd

[sonoma1993]

What kind of external hdd enclousre do you recommend for a laptop hdd? Im looking for an usb one.

 

[Lord Evermore]

Considering the only real options are USB and Firewire, if you have a USB port and no Firewire, you've chosen the only option available to you. Firewire is a preferred connection for speed and CPU utilization, but USB is more widely compatible if you needed to plug the drive into more than one machine.

If you had an external SATA port, you could get a laptop drive with SATA connectors and an external enclosure supporting eSATA, but I'm assuming you have an existing drive with IDE connector.

If you're looking for specific brands, look through other threads as this sort of thing gets asked a lot, and you can look for other site reviews. Generally even the cheap model enclosures will work well enough.

 

[GrammatonJP]

I bought a 2.5" combo with usb and firewire. It required a power bus or AC adapter.. so usb did not have enough power... my notebook had a mini firewire (4 pin) no power either...

if its for desktop pc, the 6 pin firewire will power the drive

 

[Lord Evermore]

90% of 2.5 inch enclosures can in fact run off of bus power, if they're designed to do so. However they probably require the full 500mW of power, so plugging them into a port on a non-powered hub which only supplies 100mW per port would require a power adapter. If you get one that has an adapter included, it is probably intended mainly for those times that you have a 4-pin Firewire connection, since there's no such thing as an unpowered USB port (at least not a standard one).

Some laptop drives may of course be more power-hungry than others so that they can't spin up on just the 500mW power of USB.

 

[sonoma1993]

here the ones I was looking at from newegg

icy dock

anyware

 

[HannibalX]

The good news is they are cheap. I got mine from Newegg for like $12.00

 

[corkyg]

I have a drawer full of these things - about 6 or 7. All are USB2/Firewire combos. Lord E gave you the straight skinny on power. My experience is that just about all of these will require their own power with a laptop - unless you are not using any other USB devices.

Based on that - I would select the Anyware model because it comes with everything that could possibly be needed.

 

[Operandi]

Originally posted by: sonoma1993
here the ones I was looking at from newegg

icy dock

anyware

These are much nicer.

 

[sonoma1993]

Well I bought a hdd and and 2.5 usb enclosure from bestbuy last night. I got a seagate 5400rpm 8mb cache 80gb. It was orignally $130, and it was on sale for $90. Even though it not a 7200rpm hdd, I still got it for a good price, and it more than double the storage space my puny 30gb drive I have.The enclosure i got was an adaptec for $26. I can buy an optional ac adapter for it, if it needs the extra power. Im going to use that 30gb hdd in the adaptec enclosure.

 

[corkyg]

Originally posted by: sonoma1993

it can buy an optional ac adapter for it, if it needs the extra power.

I think you can plan on it. Good choice. Should work just fine.