Laptop hard drive caddies (1 Viewer)

[Patrick Sun]

Does anyone know of laptop hard drive caddies? What I'm looking for is to be able to access a laptop hard drive that's basically hosed (but I can still scrap off some data off of it via floppy drive - but many files are quite larger than 1.44M, thus my need to access the HD via another means). I would stick the problematic HD into the caddy, and connect it to another PC/laptop that is connected to a network where I would be able to dump the files onto a file server, and would restore those files after the HD is replaced with a new OS load.

Are there any USB caddies, or would I be stuck with a parallel port caddy?

 

[Patrick_S]

There are a lot of solutions out there that will fit your requirements.

CMS for one has a housing that comes with a PC card controller. While it is not USB it does have the advantage of not needing any additional power supply to operate.

There are also firewire solutions out there but the one I've used in the past, (company owned, don't remember the name) required and additional power supply. The additional power supply in my opinion cuts down on the flexibility when used with a notebook.

 

[Wayne Bundrick]

The typical notebook hard drive is just a tiny IDE drive with a tiny connector. For about $6 you can get an adapter to fit standard IDE ribbon cable and power connector, then you can connect the drive in any PC.

 

[Patrick Sun]

Thanks for the suggestions. Will probably look for the cheap $6 solution.