Laptop hard drive enclosure?

[TriggerHappy101]

Hey, I have some old IBM Travelstar laptop hard drives. Says this on the sticker: 4200 RPM 6.00 GB ATA/IDE Model: DARA-206000 5v 500mA. I was wondering which cheap USB 2.0 HD enclosure would be good? Do they need drivers to work on windows XP systems?

Also: Are there any programs that test the HD to see if it is flawed? (If its gonna die any time soon.) I tried scandisk inside of windows 98 and it came back with 0 erros. I dont trust a 8ish year old program though....?

Thanks.

 

[phisrow]

They are, barring horror stories about specific models, more or less the same. Aesthetics, and chipset(I've heard good things about Oxford Semiconductor bridge chips) do differ, though. All of them need drivers; but the drivers are standard, and preinstalled on all modern OSs.

 

[TriggerHappy101]

I basickly want a cheap USB pocket drive to shuttle large files around that dont fit on my 512mb flash drive. How much are one of these "good" encloures going to cost me? 20 bucks?

 

[pkme2]

Pocket 60GB

There's some that are less, but their size is 15GB. Good hunting.

 

[TriggerHappy101]

Originally posted by: pkme2
Pocket 60GB

There's some that are less, but their size is 15GB. Good hunting.

I already have the hard drives. I just need the enclosure.

 

[TriggerHappy101]

What interenal enclosure does my drive use? IDE right? It has two long rows of pins.

 

[TriggerHappy101]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817155704
I found that one. Cheapest newegg has.

Or this one at 25 bucks.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817119210

Whata think?

 

[WobbleWobble]

Yes, your drive is IDE. From the external enclosures that I've used, I've never needed a driver.

Go to Hitachi's site and download a tool to test your HDD. (Hitachi took over IBM's drive manufacturing)

 

[TriggerHappy101]

Thanks for the link, doing the test now.

The only worry I have is the transfer speeds. I cant find a damn review for any of these.

 

[tiap]

Originally posted by: TriggerHappy101
I basickly want a cheap USB pocket drive to shuttle large files around that dont fit on my 512mb flash drive. How much are one of these "good" encloures going to cost me? 20 bucks?

Be carefull of using a usb powered external enclosure on your laptops. They have been known to fry the usb port which requires a mb replacement on laptops; expensive.
Depending on your situations you may be able to use an externally powered one or even mobile trays if using desktops only.

Just a word of warning.

If by chance, you are still using thinkpads, try the mobile hdrive tray in the ultrabay, they work very very well.

 

[TriggerHappy101]

Why would the USB fry? Drawing to much power from it? This this is only 4200 RPM 6GB. Im sure it doesnt pull much of anything of power.