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  #1  
02-05-2008, 03:54 AM
dannyboy dannyboy is offline
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Hi, to all,
First time posting here and it's so nice to find a decent forum with good advice unlike a lot of the forums I have used in the past.

Toshiba Satellite A100 ( Laptop )
Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition Service Pack 2
Memory 1024MB RAM
Hard Disk Capacity 100 gb
MATshitA DVD-RAM UJ-841S dvd RW

I use firefox as my prefered browser

I'm doing a lot of dvd video work,so I want to increase my storage as the files take up a lot of room. As it's a laptop my thoughts are going towards an external hardrive which seem to be reasonable in price thee days. Whilst researching them on the net, I came across hardrive enclosures that you can pick up as I have two practically new ide hardrives which were a project that I didn't finish. They have not even been formated yet. So would this be a good alternative? I believe I then just plug in the usb lead and it's ready to go. I'm aware that these have a power lead and not as portable which is not a problem. wasn't sure if the laptop would have problems recognising the two drives. what would I set the jumpers to as I assume my laptop hd will be set as master. Would they both be slaves?

Have you recommendations on the enclosures, one I have been looking at is this one

Thanks for any advice, have another question but will start a seperate thread as may get a bit confusing and too long a post.

regards

I think this topic should of gone in general, my apology if it's not in right place.
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  #2  
02-05-2008, 05:08 PM
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The external enclosures can hold IDE drives just fine, and it'll feed data to a USB2 or Firefire port. I had an enclosure on a IDE drive back when it was still USB1 (2000), worked fine but slow.

These days, there are certain controller chipsets you want to look for and avoid.

Prolific chipset is often complained about.
Oxford chipset is often praised and preferred.
Cypress has mixed reviews, newer ones seem better.

Pricerunner.co.uk and Amazon.co.uk might be helpful for shopping.

Learning which enclosure has which chipset is a matter of reading the item description and hoping it's there. If not, type the brand/model into google, and try to add the word "chipset" to the search. Or maybe pick the 3 main chipsets one by one and see if there's a hit for it.

Some people just get lucky, buy whatever they want for an enclosure, and it simply works. It's a gamble, but it works out for some.

I'm also not sure if chipsets matter as much anymore. It's honestly been a while since I've seen folks whisper about this topic. I've not looked into it since 2006, as most of what I buy these days is already enclosed by the manufacturer (Seagate, WD, Sony, Pioneer). I trust their products to work right away, and they do, no worrying about enclosure cooperation. Honestly don't even know what is in the guts of those enclosures.

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  #3  
02-06-2008, 03:26 PM
dannyboy dannyboy is offline
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Many thanks for your informative reply, I may well just research into the chipsets. The fact was, I had these two internal ide hanging around which I believe are western digital not used.

With the price of those enclosures I was not going to lose out much if I tried and it didn't work. As you said may pay in the long run to go with "Seagate, WD, Sony, Pioneer" and have piece of mind.

help appreciated.
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  #4  
02-07-2008, 01:00 PM
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Personally, I'd try the enclosures if your drives are WD, and at least 300GB each.

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02-13-2009, 08:29 AM
augeydoggy augeydoggy is offline
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Hmm, I thought this was a new forum so wondering about the post date of this discussion - apologies if it is really a year old. Check out newegg.com and read the user reviews - you can probably find same enclosures in UK. I suggest as a minimum an aluminum enclosure for cooling, often not needing a fan. Be sure it is USB 2.0 as some have older port. I have a thermaltake with a very quiet fan for my 1TB WD drive and it is very cool. It is also eSata but that connection keeps producing drive errors over time, and the usb is fine when using the drive for backup.

Last edited by augeydoggy; 02-13-2009 at 08:33 AM.
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