I have a few USB Hardrives lying around, one 70GB and one 320GB what I want to know is what's inside the plastic cases? Is it just an encased 2.5" or a different interface? The reason I ask is because I currently have my macbook in for repair but i've kept the HD, I'd like to access the data on there without buying a caddy or cable, can I just switch the drive around in the enclosure? I could just open one up but i'm afraid to incase I damage anything.
most Usb external hdds are just Standard 2.5" laptop hdd With a Sata To USB interface inside that little case.
Advice taken. I opened them up and you were right. Sweet, I can swap the 320GB one I have into my macbook when it comes back.
All USB-powered external HDD have 2.5" HDDs inside. The real question is whether the 2.5" drive is SATA or IDE. To answer Twimfy's question, it's quite likely that your drive will work with one of the enclosures you've got, they will both have standard 2.5" drives in there - but you would need to open them, and that could involve damaging the casing. You basically need to take a look for screws or plastic latches, and then decide whether you want to risk it. My guess would be that the 70GB one, being older, would be less likely to be a custom moulded job (as a lot of external drives seem to be these days) and as such you'd be more likely to be able to open it without destroying the casing. EDIT: beaten to the punch, ah well.
Both drives were SATA. The 70GB one (an HP pocket drive) opened with ease but the 320GB case is screwed not that it matters much.
If it's SATA, why would you need a caddy at all? It has STANDARD connectors - just use a SATA lead and SATA power lead!
Opening a USB enclosure is a lot less hassle than buggering around inside a PC - even assuming his backup PC has SATA ports, and if his backup machine is a laptop there's likely to be only one HDD connector anyway.
Having a proper USB caddy is a lot less hassle than buggering around opening up a retail external hard drive and voiding the warranty ;-) Some things are worth paying to do right ;-) We had BOTH methods available for laptop drives. When it came to SATA, we just plugged it in on a cable. It was quick and painless. Clip-on panels on an easy to access PC, leave the SATA cable in the PC - no hassle at all!
My backup was another macbook. Anyway my macbook returned from repair all nice and shiny and I put the 320GB drive straight in and cloned the original drive straight to it. The only problem I have now is that OSX won't let me partition the drive to install a bootcamp partition.
for some reason my macbook won't let me partition either. i had windows on it for a while, then decided to take off. now it won't let me put it back on. :shrug:
Bootcamp fucks up all of the time. I find that if I use parallels a few times with an XP partition it will always corrupt and then once you reclaim the HD space using disk utility it will never let you do dual boot again. I've read for hours on the subject and it seems the ONLY way to fix it is to reformat and re-install OSX which is a pain in the ass for me as I've scratched my leopard disk so badly that it doesn't work anymore.
