Posts Tagged ‘IDE Hard Drive Enclosure’

Posts Tagged ‘IDE Hard Drive Enclosure’

A Variety of Hard Drives Enclosures

Tuesday, August 11th, 2009

USBNow is a big supplier of HDD Enclosures (or ‘Caddys’ which they are also known as) but what makes us great is our huge selection. We stock some of the best solutions for your old/disused internal hard drives or CD/DVD rom drives. We also offer Hard Drive Enclosures in a host of different sizes. So what’s the size for you? Well, that depends entirely on the hard drive of course! From as little as £7.99!

Choose from the following:

1.8 and Hard Drive Cases
1.8″ Hard Drive Cases		 2.5" Hard Drive Cases
2.5″ Hard Drive Cases
3.5" Hard Drive Cases
3.5″ Hard Drive Cases		 5.25" Hard Drive & Optical Drive
5.25″ Hard Drive & Optical Drive
IDE & SATA Cable Kits
IDE & SATA Cable Kits		 Portable Hard Drives
Portable Hard Drives
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When it’s better not to use a Hard Drive Enclosure

Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009

When it’s better not to use a Hard Drive Enclosure

Whilst Hard Drive enclosures are an excellent way of reusing your old hard disk drive and creating a back up solution there are times when their use is not appropriate.

Hard Drives enclosures are really designed as a permanent or semi permanent solution for your HDD. This is simply because the enclosures are designed to provide a “protective wrapper” around the Hard Drive that then allows you to carry it with you or in the case of larger enclosures for 3.5″ HDD’s to stand it on your desktop.

To use the enclosure you’ll typically need a screwdriver and a few minutes to open the case, carefully insert and connect the Hard Drive, secure the Hard Drive in place and then reseal the enclosure using the supplied screws. Not difficult to do but it does take a little time and its not something you want to be doing every day.

So, if you’ve got lots of Hard Drives that you want to use, to test or recover data from then a dedicated enclosure is probably not the way to go. Similarly if you’re an IT or support engineer and part of your job is to test Hard Drives an enclosure will use up valuable time and just be cumbersome. You’d also have to have an enclosure for each size and type of Hard Drive, e.g. 2.5″ Hard Drives, 3.5″ Hard Drive and then a version for IDE and a version for SATA – simply not practical.

A much simpler option in these circumstances is to use a USB to IDE and SATA Cable kit.

These IDE and SATA kits are worth their weight in gold because they support pretty much every Hard Drive you will encounter, they come with a power supply so that you can independently power the hard drive and they connect via the ubiquitous USB.

They’re not pretty to look at and you wouldn’t use then for a permanent connection but if you’re simply looking for a quick and effective way to test hard drives or to recover data from hard drives then these kits are an excellent solution.

They work with all current PC operating systems and with Macs and the easy set up means you can be up and running in seconds. (Remember for 3.5″ Hard Drives you’ll need to set the “jumpers” to Master before connecting the HDD or it will not be recognised).

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Build a Data Back Up Solution for the Price of a Pizza

Thursday, July 2nd, 2009

Yes, it’s true you really can build a viable data back up solution for your home or small business for less than the price of a decent pizza. All you need is an old hard drive (and most people will have an old abandoned PC at home or work that’s no longer fit for purpose) and a hard drive enclosure to put the disk in.

The hard disk salvaged from an old PC costs nothing. In fact taking the hard drive out of an old PC that’s no longer used is a good idea. Leaving the hard drive in the PC and just taking it the tip will only result in someone else removing the hard drive and potentially gaining access to any information stored on it.

Once you’ve got your salvaged hard disk (and a laptop or desktop hard disk will do) then you can buy a Hard Drive Enclosure to fit the disk in. These are very inexpensive items but they will come with all the cables and connectors you need and in the case of larger enclosures to house a 3.5”disk they will come with a standalone power supply unit.

The Hard Drive Enclosures, as the name suggests is just are designed to fit around the hard disk. They are in effect just “cases” that the hard disk fits into with a USB cable (or optionally a Firewire cable) to allow you to connect the enclosure to any computer.

The need to back up data stored on your PC is no trivial matter. Without really appreciating it we’re all accumulating vast amounts of valuable and sensitive and in many cases very personal data and a lot of this is being stored on our PC. If you just think about where you store your family photo’s, your music collection, your downloaded movies, your work files and the kids homework and essays – in most cases its on the family PC.

If the PC fails or gets stolen or the hard drive becomes corrupted as a result of a virus then all the stored data could be lost. The sensible thing to do is to build or buy a backup solution and follow a regular back up routine. It sounds easy but its one of those tasks that all too many people put off.

Using an enclosure and a salvaged hard disk, cost should not be a reason for not backing up your data. For example a salvaged 120GB hard disk can hold up to 30,000 songs, 150 hours of video, or 25,000 photos and many PC’s have hard drives much larger than this.

Don’t delay, back-up today!

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Jumper Settings When Using Hard Drive Enclosures

Thursday, July 2nd, 2009

Hard Drive Enclosures are getting increasingly popular, which, given their cost and ease of use is not surprising. Enclosures are a great way to re-use on old or salvaged hard disk drive from a computer and whilst these older hard drives are always as large as the current models (in terms of storage capacity) it’s a real shame not to use them

HDD Jumper Settings

Rear HDD Jumper Settings

By way of example a salvaged 120GB hard disk drive will hold up to 30,000 songs, 150 hours of video, or 25,000 photos and the old work file of course! So even at the rate that people are saving files today that’s still a huge amount of information that the hard drive is capable of storing.

Hard drive enclosures will of course support new hard disks as well as any salvaged hard disks you happen to have lying around at home or work. If you do use an enclosure with a new hard disk then you could install a 1.5TB hard disk into the enclosure and create a very substantial back-up solution

For most people though the real benefit of an enclosure is that it allows the recovery of data from a hard disk taken out of an old PC and it then allows you to use that same hard disk to create a new back-up solution. By doing this you get real cost benefits combined with a sense of satisfaction that you are re-cycling what would otherwise be a scrapped piece of hardware.

If you are using an IDE or ATA Hard Disks with an enclosure then it’s important that you set the jumper settings on the disk to “master” and not cable select or slave. If the jumper setting is incorrectly set then the hard disk will not be recognised when connected to the PC. The default setting when removing a hard disk from a PC is not always master and whilst it seems logical that any disk installed in an external enclosure is set to “salve” but it does need to be set to “master”.

Changing the jumper settings is easy to do and only takes a few seconds. Typically the hard disk manufacturers will have put a label on the top of the hard disk illustrating how you set the jumpers.

Jumpers are just metal pins that have small black plastic sleeves that slot on them.
SATA hard disks have no jumper setting to worry about

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Are IDE/ATA Hard Drive Enclosures facing extinction?

Tuesday, June 30th, 2009

The IDE Hard Disk was first introduced in the 1980’s and since then they have been the de facto hard drive used by PC manufacturers around the world.  The ubiquity of the IDE/ATA standard and its global adoption has resulted in hundreds of millions of units being manufactured. Anyone who has bought or owned a PC since the mid 1980’s, whether for home of business use will have purchased a PC with an IDE/SAT hard drive inside it.

In the last few years a new contender, the SATA (Serial-ATA) Hard Drive has entered the fray and because it provides a significant improvement in data transfer rates it has now replaced the slower IDE disks as the disk of choice.

As well as being faster SATA hard disks also have a completely different physical interface (the way in which they connect to the PC or connect inside an enclosure). IDE/ATA Hard Drives are instantly recognisable from the 2 rows of 20 Pins on the end of the Hard Drive whereas SATA Hard Drives have two “spade type” connectors.

As PC’s with IDE Hard Drives installed reach the end of their natural life or fail it makes sense to salvage the hard drive from the PC and recover the data from the disk and then use the Hard Disk in an enclosure. By doing this not only are you able to take off your confidential and personal data, but also you can clean and reformat the disk and then create a cost effective back up and storage solution.

If its an IDE/ATA Hard Drive recovered from a laptop PC then by using an enclosure you create a truly portable back up solution for very little cost. Enclosures are easy to use, they connect to your PC via USB (or Firewire) they protect the Hard Drive is a case (typically aluminium) and they are either self powered from the USB cable or the larger versions come with a power supply unit.

There is a problem on the horizon with all of this. Whilst there are still hundreds of millions of IDE/ATA Hard Disks in use or awaiting salvage the manufacturers of IDE/ATA enclosures are beginning to reduce their investment in the IDE/ATA enclosures. Many factories have already switched off their production of IDE/ATA Hard Drive enclosures and are now only manufacturing SATA Hard Drive enclosures.

So, if you think you might have a need for an IDE/Enclosure it might be worth buying one sooner rather than later.

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New Stocks of Hard Disk Enclosure with “One Touch back-up” now in

Monday, June 29th, 2009

New stocks of the Hard Drive Enclosure from the highley regarded manufacturer Hotway are now back in stock. These proved so popular last time we had them that we’ve had to rush more stocks in to keep up with demand. The extra “one touch” back-up button makes backing up your files, musics, pictures etc. a doddle a gives you complete peace of mind.

At less than £10 they’re an absolute steal – the top quality case they come with is worth the money alone!

Hard Drive Enclosure

Hard Drive Enclosure

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Are “One Touch Back Up” Hard Drive Enclosures worth the extra money?

Monday, June 22nd, 2009

There are lots of Hard Drive Enclosures available on the market for 2.5” and 3.5” Hard Drives. Often the distinguishing features between them (apart from the obvious size) are whether they are for IDE or SATA Hard Disk Drives and whether they connect via USB or USB and Firewire.

Of course for many the aesthetics of the Hard Drive Enclosure (also often referred to as a HDD caddy or HDD case) are important because you’ll often want the enclosure to match with the other bits of kit you’ve got on your desk or in your home office. For some features likes fans or flashing lights are also key.

One further consideration you might give is ease of use and ease of making back-ups to the Hard Drive in the Hard Drive Enclosure. The later point is particularly pertinent because for many the primary reason to buy an enclosure and build an external storage solution is data back up. Given how much information we now store on our PC’s including family photos, movies, music collections and of course work files, backing up our cherished data (and our work) is critical.

Ease of data backup is helped if you buy a hard drive enclosure with a built in “One-touch” back up button built into it. These enclosures are supplied with software that is easy to load and simple to use. The software allows you to define which directories, sub-directories, folders, files and even specific files that you want to back up. When you then press the backup button on the enclosure the files you have elected to back up with automatically be copied from your PC to the Hard Drive in the enclosure.

This feature, whilst not something everyone will need, is an excellent option. It takes the guesswork out of what you need to back up and because it’s so easy to do its far more likely you will actually back up your important data. A good routine to get into is to press the back-up button before you power off the PC for the day.

The fact an enclosure has a back-up button built in does not impair its use in any other way. You can still copy, save, retrieve data from the hard drive just as you would using any hard drive enclosure. There’s no compromise on the types of Hard Disk Drives that can be used, the connection options or the styling. What you will have do however is pay a small premium for a case with this feature but given the costs of not backing up your data it’s a small price to pay.

Find the correct HDD Enclosure for you. Take a look at some of the following:
External Drive Enclosures, 1.8″ Hard Drive Cases, 2.5″ Hard Drive Cases, 3.5″ Hard Drive Cases, 5.25″ Hard Drive & Optical Drive, IDE & SATA Cable Kits, Freecom Hard Drives, Fujitsu Hard Drives

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