Connecting Extra Disks to a laptop

**Mark Snowdon** · 20 February 2004, 15:09

easy

external usb or firewire enclosures

vary from about £15 - £30 ish depending on interface (usb 1, 2/firewire) / size (of enclosure and for 2.5 or 3.5 devices)

Look at www.valuelist.co.uk - at the very bottom of the page or I am sure they can be found on ebay etc.

**Mark Snowdon** · 20 February 2004, 15:44

btw

If you find a better supplier pls let me know - I have been thinking of ordering some for a while to reuse the varios old laptop drives I have floating about.

**RobAnt** · 20 February 2004, 21:58

Re: btw

I have been thinking of ordering some for a while to reuse the varios old laptop drives I have floating about

Ahh, that's slightly different from the original question. But if you have spare laptop drives lying about, you can find an IDE 2.5 to 3.5" driver converter, complete with rails, on the home page of my website.

Sorry, can't find any external drive boxes.

**tim123** · 21 February 2004, 11:19

Re: thanks

Thanks Mark,

I was rather hoping that it would be possible to get one box with multiple bays, but now that you've pointed me in the right direction I see that this is only available with SCSI.

Getting 5.25 for the CD (which is the main reason) is also restricted. There are lots of options for 2.5 (It seems I can even buy one from my local 'nothing town' computer shop for 45 Euro).

By driving to the next town I can get one from: www1.atelco.de/6L61dkRKV3...1&agid=223 but 75 Euro is TTP, it doesn't even look nice!

So the best option appears to be: cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISA...tegory=167

Pity he's in Grimsby it's too far to go on a weekend at home, perhaps he can send it here. And unfortunately he doesn't have a BuyitNow price so you have to 'win' it. I wonder how he sources them?

What is "Hot-Swappable". Does it just mean that you can unplug the USB from from the PC and plug in another (it seems fairly obvious that you can do this)?

tim

**Mark Snowdon** · 21 February 2004, 17:38

drive enclosures

RobAnt - Thanks but I have internal adapters - I specifically want externals.

Tim,

Sorry - didnt realise that you were in Germany.

I have seen a multi-disk cage - if only I could remember where... cant remember if it was usb or firewire - would that matter ?

**RobAnt** · 21 February 2004, 18:07

Re: drive enclosures

I have a source for those (Firewire/USB2.0 external drive boxes), but they are about £90 (ex VAT) each - without drives, unfortunately - which isn't particularly economical imv.

If you're interested, pm me.

(Although having said that, the boxes with drives are about another £100).

What's wrong with ValueList, btw, they seem to have good prices. You can PM me with the answer to that too.

**Mark Snowdon** · 22 February 2004, 12:45

valuelist

Rob

nothing wrong with valuelist - they usually do quick delivery. Their pricing varies though. Somethings are well priced, some v.overpriced. I tend to use them for the odd bits that I cant get elsewhere.

I was thinking about getting as batch of those external cases and trying them on ebay.

**fiddleabout** · 23 February 2004, 12:26

Re: valuelist

Try online.stak.com/cgi-bin/stak/

They are using frames so I can't give you a product link but a search for usb external gives ..

41949266 ME-250UF Available.
External 2.5 Inch IDE to FireWire and USB2.0 Case
£23.00 £27.03
41949263 ME-350UF Available.
External 3.5 Inch IDE to FireWire and USB2.0 Case
£30.00 £35.25
41949260 ME-525UF Available.
External 5.25 Inch IDE to FireWire and USB2.0 case will also support 3.5 Inch hard drive
£35.00 £41.12

I bought a USB1 box + 2.5 drive on eBay - USB1 is too slow so I bought a USB2 box on eBay - this sort of thing appears there regularly.

**tim123** · 25 February 2004, 12:06

Re: Germany

Thanks Guys:

Being in Germany isn't a problem as:

a) Anything I can get in the UK MO, I can get in Germany MO [1].

b) There is much better availability of stuff in the local shops at MO prices.

However, working away from home makes MO, especially of large, stuff difficult. This would be the case whether I was working in Munich or Manchester (I'm not in either).

[1] except an english language version of OEM-XP, the lack of which caused me to abandon my plans to build my own, the extra 100 quid for 'normal' XP' made it uneconomic. Who in their right mind pays the asking price for XP, when you can buy a complete pre-installed machine for 300 quid from Dell, at least you could if the delivery arrangements of "it come when it comes" wasn't an *absolute* deal breaker.

Tim

Connecting Extra Disks to a laptop