Adapter for hard drives???

[dschwabauer]

I just bought an external hard drive enclosure for a regular 3.5" desktop hard drive. Is there an adapter that I can use that will step the regular connection for a 3.5" drive to a 2.5" laptop hard drive so I won't have to purchase another external hard drive enclosure for my laptop? Thanks.

 

[ScrapSilicon]

Originally posted by: dschwabauer
I just bought an external hard drive enclosure for a regular 3.5" desktop hard drive. Is there an adapter that I can use that will step the regular connection for a 3.5" drive to a 2.5" laptop hard drive so I won't have to purchase another external hard drive enclosure for my laptop? Thanks.

you are welcome

 

[JimPhelpsMI]

Hi, If you are asking if there is an adaptor to connect a 2.5" Laptop HDD to a standard IDE 3.5" HDD connector the answer is yes. You will find them on EBay, but the shipping is ridiculous. I see them at the Chicago area Computer shows for $10.00. There are two varities. One comes with the adaptor connector only and the other also has brackets to mount the 2.5" drive into a 3.5" bay. You should be able to search the Internet and locate what you need. Hope this helps, Jim

 

[artemedes]

If you have a CompUSA in your area you could buy this:

http://www.compusa.com/products/product_info.asp?product_code=294956&pfp=srch1

10 bucks.

 

[dschwabauer]

artemedes and Jim:

OK...here is what I have...hope this makes sense. I just purchased a 3.5" external hard drive enclosure because I am upgrading my home desktop to a bigger hard drive (long story on what started me on this path...and probably not important). I wanted to take my old WD 120GB hard drive which I removed from my computer and move some of the data to the new hard drive, a WD 160GB hard drive. So I spent like $50 on an Adaptec HD enclosure at CompUSA.

Next topic: I also have a Gateway 7422GX laptop that has an 80GB, 4200rpm hard drive in it. I am quite seriously thinking about upgrading the 4200rpm drive with at least a 100GB, 5400rpm Seagate drive (I really want the 100GB, 7200rpm Seagate drive, but not sure I want to wait until the release the drive probably in the fall sometime...of course, Seagate has been promising this new drive along with a 120GB, 5400rpm drive for at least 6 months now, so who knows if they will actually release the 100GB, 7200rpm drive by fall or not) Anyway, I really did not want to spend another $50 to get a 2.5" hard drive enclosure in addition to the other drive enclosure I have and was wondering if the adapter that artemedes has suggested would do the trick for me. I am not interested in permanently mounting the laptop hard drive in the enclosure...just want to clone the drive info onto the new Seagate hard drive that I hope to purchase sometime within the next couple of weeks.

Hope this explains what I have been trying to say better. I know it is a bit long, but I wanted to make myself as clear as possible. By the way, I did stop into a second CompUSA yesterday to look for the very adapter you suggested and they looked at me like I had rocks in my head. Even after I encouraged them to look online at the CompUSA site and it did confirm the like you sent, they still had no idea if they had it in stock.... Hmmmmm, kind of makes you wonder what kind of people CompUSA hires.

Thanks to all who have given input. I do appreciate it. Dave

 

[corkyg]

You can pick up a 2.5 to 3.5 adapter at any electronics store. I got this a couple of years ago at SW Electronics. Try Radio Shack. It was about $7.00.

This is what you are looking for:

Adapter

I use this one on a mobile rack. Works fine.

 

[artemedes]

Sorry for taking so long to respond.

I am not interested in permanently mounting the laptop hard drive in the enclosure...just want to clone the drive info onto the new Seagate hard drive that I hope to purchase sometime within the next couple of weeks.

If your just worrying about cloning the drive then the adapter is all you need and use your desktop to make the image. You could even get two and use a desktop computer and clone them or make an image file. If you have the full version of ghost you could forgo the adapter alltogether and make your image file over the network, put the new drive in and load the image from the network.

When I went to CompUSA those boneheads couldn't help me either. I had to find it myself. I found it in the area that had drive rails, power spliter/adapters, and cooling accessories. I made a point to show the two boneheads I asked for help the adapter after I found it. They were like "Oh, wow man I didn't even know we carried that!". I clearly told them I was looking for an adapter that allowed me to hook up a laptop hard drive to a normal ide cable and they told me they didn't have anything like that. So I had to show them they were wrong.