Help out a compu-tard

W

walleyecrazy

New Member
I have a HP desktop computer that is approximately 3 years old. Thanks to the actions of utility company the power supply has been fried. The computer is not worth putting any money IMO and was due for replacement anyway. I would however like to pull te hard drive and put it in an external enclosure so that it can be used with my laptop via USB. I have no experience with these external enclosures and was wondering of someone could recommend me a decent enclosure that is reasonably priced to use for this purpose.
 
There are two common types of hard drives for that era, IDE and SATA. Both of which require a different type of enclosure, do you know what interface your hard drive uses?
 
I'm not sure which one it is. If I pull the drive does it say which type or is it something you just determine by the connections on the hdd?
 
Google "ide vs sata" and look at the images. It'll be pretty easy to compare the images with your hard drive and figure out what sort of connection you have.

Another super easy way to find out what connection you have is just to look at the width of the ribbon cable on the back of the drive; if it's pretty wide, like 1.5-2 inches, you've got an IDE connection, but if it's narrow, you've got a SATA connection.

Hope that helps
 
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Thank you all for the help. I just ordered that case. My laptop has an eSATA port so it should work great with the enclosure. Now to start looking at what I am going to replace my desktop with.
 
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