Thank you for being a valued part of the CNET community. As of December 1, 2020, the forums are in read-only format. In early 2021, CNET Forums will no longer be available. We are grateful for the participation and advice you have provided to one another over the years.

Thanks,

CNET Support

General discussion

HDD conversion - internal to external

Apr 6, 2004 4:34PM PDT

ive been able to come across a very nice internal hard drive that i want to be able to use with my labtop, so i would like to convert it to an external drive. as ive found most conversion kits are around $100, for what seems to be just a power supply, case, and fan, is it possible to convert the drive myself? i have access to the parts that would be in the case, so is this a viable option?

thanks

Discussion is locked

- Collapse -
Easy. . .
Apr 6, 2004 7:04PM PDT
- Collapse -
Re:HDD conversion - internal to external
Apr 7, 2004 12:49AM PDT

As you can see from the other reply, these cases for IDE drives are REAL cheap.

BUT...if you don't have USB2 or firewire on your laptop putting in a USB1 hard drive will be a painful experience since USB1 is SO SLOW the drive will just not run at high enough speed to do real work with.