What Hard Drive Enclosure Do I Need?

jvivlemore

Member
Jan 14, 2011
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I want to find out what's stored on some older hard drives I have laying around. At one time I had a hard drive enclosure that I purchased to plug these drives into for this purpose. I can no longer find the enclosure. Can someone please tell me what one I would need? There are too many options for me to guess on newegg blindly

The HDD I have in front of me has the ribbon cable that goes across a little more than 50% of the back of the drive and connects to the motherboard. Here's whats listed on the drive. WD1200 (WD Caviar Enchanced IDE Hard Drive). Model is WD1200BB-00CAA0. Based on this what type of hard drive enclosure am I looking for? Thanks!
 

Paperdoc

Platinum Member
Aug 17, 2006
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You need to be more specific than shabby says, which I suspect you know. There are three items you need to specify.

1. The internal interface - that is, what type of HDD connection you need inside the case. Since you seem to have only IDE type older drives, you MUST get an enclosure that accepts IDE units. Do not get one for SATA HDD's. (In most cases, I'm sure you will find the enclosure expects you to set the jumpers on the IDE unit to the Master position, since it will be the only device on the interface inside the enclosure.)

2. External Interface - this must match what port(s) you have on the machine you will connect to. Most enclosures come with two, and a few with three, but you get to use only one interface type at a time. Almost all computers now have USB2 ports, and most new ones have USB3. Many have also IEEE1394, also called Firewire (more properly, Firewire 400, because there is a less common faster version called Firewire 800). Many have eSATA built into the mobo with an eSATA port on the back. Check carefully to see what your machine has available. Among these options, USB2 is the slowest, but is VERY commonly available. eSATA may be the fastest, but USB3 and Firewire 400 are almost as fast. Get what matches your machine. In my case (a few years ago) I got an enclosure with both eSATA and USB2. I use the eSATA connection because it is fast and my mobo has that port, but the USB2 can always be used with nearly any machine.

3. Power Supply - for use with older IDE desktop (3½" form factor) HDD's, your enclosure will need a power supply. Do not rely on an enclosure that claims to draw all the power needed from the USB port. The USB2 ports never could supply enough power for HDD's of that size, although apparently the new USB3 ports can. Firewire400 and eSATA standard ports do not provide any power for the HDD in the enclosure. So the enclosure should have either a power supply built into the box with a cord to plug into the wall, or one of those little "wall wart" things that plugs into an outlet and provides the DC power via a special cord to the enclosure. Then you are not relying on power from the computer via the data cable.

Oh, and just check whether the enclosure you buy comes with a data cable or two to connect to your computer, or whether you have to buy one yourself. And make sure you get the data cable for the particular port type you will use for the connection.
 

mfenn

Elite Member
Jan 17, 2010
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www.mfenn.com
The Bytecc that shabby recommended meets all those requirements. USB 2.0 is perfectly sufficient for such an old drive.
 

FatClown

Member
Dec 5, 2008
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This would do you just fine does both sata and ide
its not an enclosure, but its faster than enclosures to inspecting multiple hard drives.