A couple weeks ago my HP laptop croaked on me, and I refuse to pay half the cost of the original hardware to fix it. (Money better spent on a tablet in the future). So I was stuck with a broken laptop which happened to contain a hard drive with tons of essential data on it. My first instinct was to drop it in one of my other two laptops, but for some reason XP would not start in the other laptops. (even Safe Mode)
The solution was to pick up this device called a "Portable 2.5" External Enclosure". Basically it is a little device that you drop the 2.5" HDD into, and then you can read and write to it using just your USB port. Now, I know what you are saying... I could have picked up any number of cheaper devices to get the data off of this hard drive. The benefit of this thing is that after I got my data off of the hard drive I can now use this drive as a way to backup data from my laptop. It works off of USB power and can run at USB 2.0 speeds. (I only have 1.1 now though) I prefer something like this because I can easily upgrade or replace the hard drive independently of the rest of the device, as opposed to an all in one device.
I can't find the exact product that I bought online, but it was something like this.
-James
Not to rub it in, but my Dell laptop has a slot for a slave HD. If that happened to me, I guess I could have reformatted a new boot drive and installed the other one as the slave drive to get the data out.
Also, to prevent what happened to you I have 2 hard drives formatted with the same OS and app blueprint (I also have a 3rd hard drive I swap out for beta testing when I want to look at stuff remotely). Then, I store all of my application data on a server LAN and have a bootup script that gathers all of the application settings and data forced to be stored in specific local locations, and copies them to a backup location on the LAN.
Not foolproof, but it should help if I experience a HD crash like yours.
I am definitly a fan of Dell, I actually have two Dell laptops here. Hell, I used to work for Dell. :) I only bought the HP because I needed a cheap little thing to leave in the family room.
That is a pretty sweet setup you have. :)
-James
can I buy internal hard drive available at best buy etc (I think they are for desktop) and use external encloser to connect to laptop?
I have a Dell Inspiron 8100, that will not boot into Windows from the hard drive. I bought a 2.5" portable enclosure, but my harddrive didn't fit in it? My har drive has one row of pins, and the enclosure has two rows of female end fittings? I am missing something, can I buy an enclosure with one rows of end fittings?
u need to unscrew ur hard drive
Dear Sir/Madam
Good day, how are you.
My name is Jimmy Chen , from Mascot International Corp. We are a manufacture of external storage devices, such as External Enclosure?Data bank ? HDD Rack ,we are specialized in OEM, ODM and OBM .
Sir/Madam, I am looking for your person in charge of Purchasing or Product evaluation(Purchase manager/Product Manager) , please kindly advice me a way of contact.
Your help is highly appreciated.
Thanks
Our web-site www.mascot-tek.com.tw
Best Regards
JIMMY CHEN
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5F., No.173, Yonghe Rd., Jhonghe City, Taipei County 235, Taiwan (R.O.C.)
TEL:886-2-2248-9613 / FAX:886-2-2248-2976 / CELL:886-926-159814
MSN :dkmonkey4@hotmail.com / SKYPE:MASCOT-JIMMY
www.mascot-tek.com.tw
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I need to get an enclosure for my internal hard drive for my HP laptop...Where can I find them to buy??????? I have 2 slots to put hard drives into and I bought the drive but it didnt have the caseing I need. PLEASE HELP!!!
i have exactly the same prob. bought an enclosure and can "see" my files. however i applied file privacy to my documents and i cannot access them. does anyone know how to get around this?