Help me find a good 2.5" external enclosure

[invalidbuffalo]

I am getting an external enclosure for an 80GB 5400RPM hard drive out of a Dell XPM M1210 notebook. Can you recommend a good enclosure that is USB powered?

Thanks

[bbz_Ghost]

http://shop2.outpost.com/product/3967468;jsessionid=VV12lC+f0tj901Ze1htUWw**.node1?site=sr:SE ARCH:MAIN_RSLT_PG

Something like that would work just fine. The issue at hand is how much amperage that 2.5" hard drive requires, because that plug the enclosure might overload a single USB port. Good thing though: those 2.5" external enclosures almost always come with a double ended USB plug:

It's got 1 plug on 1 end that goes to the external case itself, but the other end has 2 USB plugs attached to each other. One goes into the machine as the main USB cord (that's the actual data transfer goes over) and the other is just for additional power - meaning it's only using the power contacts inside the second USB port.

Some hard drives are actually low on their power requirements and you might get away with using just one of the two plugs. If you're drawing too much juice with just one, the computer will pop up an alert box and tell you the device you've plugged in is doing just that: drawing too much power. Then you'd plug in the second power plug and go from there.

Hope this helps...

ps
While I don't think it's relevant, it could be: I'm going under the assumption that 80GB drive is a standard IDE drive; I know newer laptops, a lot of them, are now coming with SATA laptop drives. The Vantec external case in the link - as most of them are - is designed for the older ATA/IDE laptop drives. Just wanted to mention that...

[invalidbuffalo]

The drive is sata.

[bbz_Ghost]

EEeesh... that's gonna be a bit more difficult to track down.

http://www.addonics.com/products/jupiter/jexd.asp

That's the only decent looking one I could locate, the rest look like crap sooo... you could always find an SATA to IDE adapter also but all that additional wiring and board wouldn't fit in a 2.5" external enclosure anymore, either.

Good luck...