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I'm in need of a cheap external harddrive. I do have a dead toshiba laptop(fried motherboard) with what should be a good 80GB harddrive. Haven't accessed the drive since the laptop died a year ago. Specifications listed here: http://sdd.toshiba.com/main.aspx?Path=818200000007000000010000659800001516/81820000010d000000010000659c000003b7/818200000192000000010000659c00000535/8182000006d9000000010000659c00001555

Is there a standard case I can just slide this thing into and plug it into my new/used desktop? Along with my older but still working toshiba laptop, my mom's 3 office desktops, her new home computer, my sister's laptop, her boyfriend's laptop... etc... I've been moving lots of stuff between computers lately and it's just too slow to do it through a router plus having to have both computers in the same house at the same time connected to the same network. My 1gb flash drive isn't a whole lot of help either when I need to move 10-40gb around.

http://www.xpcgear.com/notebookideusb.html

There are several 2.5" enclosures such as the ones dallas pointed you to. For maximum flexibility, you can also pick up one that will house 3.5 and 2.5" drives. Just be sure to find one that supports your type of interface, be it eide or sata.

the best ones have their own power supply too. not all drives will work with an enclosure that only gets its power from usb.

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"That's the trouble with political jokes in this country... they get elected!" -- Dave Lippman

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/category/category_slc.asp?CatId=2781&

I love these guys, the last motherboard I bought from them, they tested fully before they shipped it. Which is good, because the first one they tested that was going to be sent to me, was bad. I had to wait another 2 days, but it was worth it to save the time of getting a working product

Fish tanks are an expensive addiction

But what is the interface of that drive? I showed it to several people and started a huge argument(which never got solved) on it being SATA or IDE since none of them had seen that type of connection. If it's IDE then this enclosure is technically free http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817163050 at least until I get around to buying something better. I'll probably never have a reason to run 3.5" drives since my other laptop is a 2.5" and I don't have a reason to buy another laptop in the future. I'll probably get a 160-200gb desktop HD to use externaly whan I have some spare cash but I need something now.

according the to link you posted in your first post, its an ATA-6 Interface, which is a form of ide interface. with the external cases like that, but yes, that would work just fine. I use an adapter for laptop drives and use them in my desktop pc

Key Features Specifications Support Related Items

80GB capacity
Fluid Dynamic Bearing (FDB) motor drive
9.5mm High
12ms Average Seek Time
ATA-6 Interface
100MB/sec Transfer Rate
8MB Buffer
300,000 MTTF Hours

Fish tanks are an expensive addiction

YAY! I finally get to see my hard drive I haven't accessed in a year. So cool. Now it's like an oversized flash drive but far easier to use than a large desktop drive.

The instructions were amusing. Not only is it a tiny case, with tiny screws, a tiny scewdriver, and a mini cd, but the instructions are only about 4" wide paper with the tiniest font I've ever seen. Even when you decipher them they aren't really that useful. "Connect hard disk to USB HDD case and secure it" ... Kinda my first thought on what to do. Luckily the only issue was the fact my hd had extra panels screwed on to connect it to the laptop and didn't fit until they were removed.

Uh oh found a problem. It won't even let me select the old documents and settings folder. It goes to not responding if I click on it so I can't even select it to delete. Everything else opens and I moved some stuff back and forth but that one folder causes it to freeze.

How to take ownership of a file or folder in Win XP

If you had an account password on it when it was in the laptop, you won't be able to access it before you take ownership of it on the desktop.

if the files are in a bad sector it won't matter if you can take ownership or not. try taking ownership and if that still freezes then you'll have to find a way to get that data out of the bad sectors. try a linux boot disk like knoppix and see if you still have trouble with that folder. i would recommend downloading version 3.6 so you can write to your hard drive after it's loaded up

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"That's the trouble with political jokes in this country... they get elected!" -- Dave Lippman

It kept freezing and I decided anything on there isn't worth it. I moved or deleted everything else and then formatted it to get rid of that folder. It's been working fine since then.