hard drive

[leeegglestone]

I was wondering if you can get some kind of device or adaptor where you could connect a hard drive to the pc via the USB ports rather than internally?

any ideas?

[Gecko]

There are many available like those made by

[teststrips]

what you are looking for is an External Enclosure. They come in USB 2.0, SATA, and Firewire versions. 2.5 inch enclosures are for laptop hard drives, 3.5 inch enclosures are for normal hard drives, and 5.25 inch (5 1/4) enclosures will usually take both normal hard drives and CD-ROMS, Cd writers, etc.

The laptop ones are the cheapest, if you happen to have a laptop hard drive, it uses a lot less power than a normal one, so you generally only need the usb cable, and it gets power from your computer.

The 3.5 ones are generally the most expensive category.. they will only fit normal sized hard drives, and you'll need both the Data cable and a power cable.. they usually come with power bricks

the 5.25 ones start at just a bit higher than the laptop enclosures price wise. I've never seen a 5.25 enclosure that didn't specificaly say it works with hard drives. Some enclosures have external power bricks, but some also have built in power supplies and take a normal PC power cord. (so yo don't have to carry around a power brick) I have the following enclosure.

- I like this enclosure b/c it has a built in power supply. My only problem with it is that the fan is pretty noisy. If you want to constantly run this drive on your main PC, i'd suggest looking elsewhere.

entire dealsonic external enclosure section


Entire Newegg external enclosure section

[leeegglestone]

I have found a USB External Portable 200GB Hard Drive for 136pounds inc p+p.

Is this a good price, also with this can i put inside it another hard drive or do u have to keep the one that it comes with?

lee

[teststrips]

if you'd change the internal hard drive, you'd likely void any warrenty on both the enclosure and the drive itself. I take it from the price quote in Pounds that you are not in the US. Typically buying a pre-made drive here in the usa is more expensive than buying a similar sized drive and an external box... well for those 160 gigs and above... 120's are about the same, and with 80gigs pre made would be cheaper.

I'd highly suggest checking a couple of stores to see what prices you can find, and seeing what things are like on your side of the pond. Lately, here in the us, Mail In Rebates are huge in the hard drive market. A 200 gig drive costs about $200 in retail stores, but it isn't uncommon to find a $70 and a $20 dollar rebate for that drive, making it's price $110.. a little over 50 cents/gig