IDE Drive to External USB?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Obadiah
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Obadiah

Hi. Seems to me I've seen a way to take a plain IDE drive and make it
an external USB device. What's the easiest, cheapest way to go about
doing this?

Thanks for your help.
 
Obadiah said:
Hi. Seems to me I've seen a way to take a plain IDE drive and make it
an external USB device. What's the easiest, cheapest way to go about
doing this?
Click to expand...

Buy a USB enclosure and put the drive in it.


-WD
 
Obadiah said:
Hi. Seems to me I've seen a way to take a plain IDE drive and make it
an external USB device. What's the easiest, cheapest way to go about
doing this?
Click to expand...

People are recomending USB or Firewire enclosures. You can also get a USB
cable that plugs into the disk IDE cable (along with a power supply for the 4
pin connector). This is useful if you are constantly swapping things around.

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=12-107-107&depa=0

Also if you are going to use a disk for long time you probably should get an
IDE or Firewire enclosure that has a fan in it.
 
I have an external Maxtor Firewire 80 GB hard disk, FAT formated.
Now I bought a 250 WD hard disk, formated with NTFS and tried to
substitute the old 80GB HD in the Maxtor external case, but it didn't
work well.
I got file system problems. When I check the disk in Windows it seems
to check only 80GB and tells me it can't complete the operation.

The disk was formated with an IDE cable and I also copied some data
which I can access when it is inside the firewire case.

Any clues?

AP
 
alexp said:
I have an external Maxtor Firewire 80 GB hard disk, FAT formated.
Now I bought a 250 WD hard disk, formated with NTFS and tried to
substitute the old 80GB HD in the Maxtor external case, but it didn't
work well.
I got file system problems. When I check the disk in Windows it seems
to check only 80GB and tells me it can't complete the operation.

The disk was formated with an IDE cable and I also copied some data
which I can access when it is inside the firewire case.

Any clues?

AP
Click to expand...


Hello, AP:

The Maxtor case probably contains firmware, which limits the installed
hard disk to a certain, maximum size (and/or, only works properly, with
Maxtor drives?). If so, you'll need a different enclosure, for your
Western Digital 250GB.

Good luck!


Cordially,
John Turco <[email protected]>


PS: On my Micro Solutions "backpack" (30GB external HDD), the firmware
is in the parallel-type connector (of the proprietary USB cable), which
attaches to the backpack, itself.
 
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