Garden Railway Forum

I realise that this is probably Old Hat for many of you, but just in case it isn't.
I've just invested in a couple of hard drive enclosures/caddies for drives taken out of redundant laptop computers: They cost me the princely sum of £5.99 each (inc postage) from a UK seller on eBay
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/304043082956

It's usually dead easy to extract the hard drive from a laptop - 2 - 4 screws holding a flap on the underside of the laptop and the drive unclips. I'd suggest doing this anyway before dumping any old computer. It's then simply a case of slotting the drive into the caddy, replacing the lid and plugging the USB lead into the back of it - et voila, one external hard drive (assuming of course that the reason the laptop failed wasn't because the hard drive had failed!).

I've been able to extract some music and photo files off the drives before reformatting them - though I'll not save anything critical on them in case they give up the ghost.

To my mind, it's worth the investment of £6.00!

Rik
PS - The most difficult part was trying to figure out how the lid comes off the caddy - it slides to the back - the lid is uppermost when the electronic components are facing downwards - as in the photo

One thing to note is that there are 2 types of caddy and 2 types of hard drive.

If it's a more recent machine then it's likely to SATA, older ones are likely to be IDE. If it's a full length connector full of a dual bank of pins or holes that's IDE, SATA is not quite full width and has a more unique type of connector.

Been using these types of hard drive enclosures for donkey's year now and they are great for transporting or backing up data, as long as it's just a back up and not the only backup. Hard drives fail, A LOT!

-steves- wrote: ↑Tue Jan 11, 2022 2:32 pm One thing to note is that there are 2 types of caddy and 2 types of hard drive.

If it's a more recent machine then it's likely to SATA, older ones are likely to be IDE. If it's a full length connector full of a dual bank of pins or holes that's IDE, SATA is not quite full width and has a more unique type of connector.

Been using these types of hard drive enclosures for donkey's year now and they are great for transporting or backing up data, as long as it's just a back up and not the only backup. Hard drives fail, A LOT!

I found my two drives were clearly labelled SATA and slotted in without a problem.

I had less success with the DVD ROM/ CD RW enclosure. Completely different plug socket arrangement. I've sent off for another which will hopefully be different. The descriptions don't show the connectors clearly unfortunately.

Rik

Great idea! Never knew one could buy those. Certainly beats paying a technician $100 to transfer data between drives.

ge_rik wrote: ↑Tue Jan 11, 2022 2:49 pm
I had less success with the DVD ROM/ CD RW enclosure. Completely different plug socket arrangement. I've sent off for another which will hopefully be different. The descriptions don't show the connectors clearly unfortunately.

Rik

The reason for that is that there is not the same agreed standard like there is for HDD's, even in the same company sometimes, though some do exchange and meet a standard, many do not. Once you get started on the front panel, forget it, that's a minefield and is just about different on every model.

There are other connectors as well for hard drives, but those are mainly for commercial use like fibre connectors etc.

I just opened a parcel just moments ago which contains a hard drive enclosure.... The drive isnt recognized by my laptop, it just makes clicking noise, plugged in the desktop and its readable.

and a dual power USB cable (the red connector is power only) power from 2 USB ports to the drive, to be sure enough power is available as i got the message "USB drive not ready"

7€ for the enclosure and 4.60€ cable.

-steves- wrote: ↑Tue Jan 11, 2022 2:32 pm One thing to note is that there are 2 types of caddy and 2 types of hard drive.

If it's a more recent machine then it's likely to SATA, older ones are likely to be IDE. If it's a full length connector full of a dual bank of pins or holes that's IDE, SATA is not quite full width and has a more unique type of connector.

Been using these types of hard drive enclosures for donkey's year now and they are great for transporting or backing up data, as long as it's just a back up and not the only backup. Hard drives fail, A LOT!

There are also 2 sizes of hard drive, a laptop usually 2.5" and desktop 3.5", then there are IDE and SATA, but two type of SATA, SATA II and SATA III (6gb), so these currently out there 6 types of hard drive all with different interfaces.

IDE is very old 10-15 years last build

Sata 1-2-3- refers only to the data transferspeed. Pinlayout and cables are the same and the drives are downwards compatible so no problems here!

Palmerston wrote: ↑Tue Jan 11, 2022 5:45 pm IDE is very old 10-15 years last build

Sata 1-2-3- refers only to the data transferspeed. Pinlayout and cables are the same and the drives are downwards compatible so no problems here!

I stand corrected

-steves- wrote: ↑Tue Jan 11, 2022 3:54 pm
The reason for that is that there is not the same agreed standard [for DVD/CD drives] like there is for HDD's, even in the same company sometimes, though some do exchange and meet a standard, many do not. Once you get started on the front panel, forget it, that's a minefield and is just about different on every model.

Thanks for that info, Steve. If the second case isn't any good, I'll give up. Just checked and complete USB DVD RW drives aren't much more expensive than enclosures anyway, so I'll cut my losses, sell the empty enclosures and buy a new complete drive. (My new laptop doesn't have a built in DVD RW which I still need for several reasons)

Rik

ge_rik wrote: ↑Wed Jan 12, 2022 8:46 am

-steves- wrote: ↑Tue Jan 11, 2022 3:54 pm
The reason for that is that there is not the same agreed standard [for DVD/CD drives] like there is for HDD's, even in the same company sometimes, though some do exchange and meet a standard, many do not. Once you get started on the front panel, forget it, that's a minefield and is just about different on every model.

Thanks for that info, Steve. If the second case isn't any good, I'll give up. Just checked and complete USB DVD RW drives aren't much more expensive than enclosures anyway, so I'll cut my losses, sell the empty enclosures and buy a new complete drive. (My new laptop doesn't have a built in DVD RW which I still need for several reasons)

Rik

I am in the same boat. My laptop has no internal optical drive and I have to use a USB CD/DVD drive / recorder.

Jimmyb wrote: ↑Tue Jan 11, 2022 5:08 pm

-steves- wrote: ↑Tue Jan 11, 2022 2:32 pm One thing to note is that there are 2 types of caddy and 2 types of hard drive.

If it's a more recent machine then it's likely to SATA, older ones are likely to be IDE. If it's a full length connector full of a dual bank of pins or holes that's IDE, SATA is not quite full width and has a more unique type of connector.

Been using these types of hard drive enclosures for donkey's year now and they are great for transporting or backing up data, as long as it's just a back up and not the only backup. Hard drives fail, A LOT!

There are also 2 sizes of hard drive, a laptop usually 2.5" and desktop 3.5", then there are IDE and SATA, but two type of SATA, SATA II and SATA III (6gb), so these currently out there 6 types of hard drive all with different interfaces.

FYI there is also a 1.8" HDD as well, but that is a SATA connector only, hence I didn't mention it as it fitted into the two connectors mentioned.

Palmerston wrote: ↑Tue Jan 11, 2022 5:45 pm IDE is very old 10-15 years last build

Sata 1-2-3- refers only to the data transferspeed. Pinlayout and cables are the same and the drives are downwards compatible so no problems here!

IDE may well be old, but I still have a box of them in drive enclosures that I use as external storage from time to time to move data around, all be it, not very much capacity. Not sure how much longer they will work as some of those are at least 20+ years old, lol