External HD bay with USB 2 connector?

Hi,

I have a PC that is a few years old and the Mobo got fried. However I have four 40 gig HDs in the case that I'd like to get some of the data off of.

My new PC, a Dell E520, only has two HD bays, one filled with the main HD. The salesman lied to me and said it had three bays, and the connector was split allowing two drives. It's not.

So my question is what is a solution for this?

I've considered getting some kind of external HD bay that I can just plug into a USB 2.0 port and get the data off.

Ideally I'd like to have a bay that will allow more than one HD, but I don't want to spend 200-300 bucks for some kind of mega backup storage case.

Any suggestions on these or on how best to get the data off the old HDs?

I don't mind doing it one at a time, but that means, with only one HD bay in the main case that I'd be wasting 120 Gig of storage space.

If anyone who has experience with this can reply, maybe posting a link to something. I'd rather not have to go the route of installing a card - just want to be able to plug in a USB cable to one of my 2.0 ports.

TIA.


[edit on 2-3-2007 by Badge01]

External USB enclosures are perfectly fine for plugging drives in and getting your data off and a single drive enclosure is cheap. Just do a copy of the data and not a move and stash those drives away in case your new drive fails(it happens). Then once you got everything off you want. Buy yourself a nice big ide drive to keep in the enclosure and use it for all sorts of storage purposes.

I carry an external enclosure around with me in the truck loaded up will all sorts of goodies for tech work. Also an 8gig Flash drive for portability. USB external stuff works great.

You can pick up an external ATA drive bay for 20-30 bucks (50-60 for SATA). I've got 3 of them hanging off my PC right now with about 600Gb of storage that I will never use up. Of course the best part is that if your OS gets fried and you need to reformat, the external drives will be fine.

On a side note, I think you can pick up an IDE cable with2 connectors for even less than the cost of a whole separate drive bay.

But make sure to research the actual external enclosure thoroughly. My experience is that sometimes the enclosures just don't get along with some hard drives. Also, they can get really hot if not properly ventilated or cooled somehow. And make sure that it's placed somewhere solid where it can not move or get hit. (accidentally kicked one once and it screwed it up pretty badly. Most of the data was not retrievable with any recovery programs or methods) You can check out a few really good sites like newegg, Mwave, ClubIT, etc. (hehe, I have 4 500GB and 1 320GB hard drives in external enclosures for storing Anime.)

Yeah, "Anime"

(that's another way of saying "a few terabytes of cartoon porn")

lol, nah. I'll pass on the Hentai. To much scary stuff involved. (avoid doing a google search if you're disturbed by catgirls and bondage)

Thanks guys. That helps.

Now I have to deal with the fact that Dell sent me Two DVD-ROM drives instead of one of them being a DVD-Burner drive. The guy punched in 'CD-burner' for the combo drive. Now I can play 2 movies at one time! LOL>

Oh I can burn a 48x CD rom. Trouble is I don't even have any of those. 1996 called and wants its technology back.

Who puts a _CD_ burner in a power packed new PC with a 2.5 Gigahertz duomobile processor and a 340Gig HD, now days? Guess I could back up some of my desktop wallpapers on there, and few .pdf books.

After an hour of talking them through the sheer lunacy of such a config they agreed and sent me a $50 voucher for the Dell store. Funny thing is, they wanted the drive back. LOL Yeah I'm spending 10 bucks to ship a cheap Korean DVD ROM drive that probably cost them 8 dollars each to buy in bulk at the factory?

Hi Guys,

Just wanted to report back and let you know what happened on the downside of this PC malfunction.

First got a new PC, but didn't really get what I wanted because I ordered it by phone (no pc to track it, d'oh).

Dell, instead of realizing I wanted something more asked me the same dumb questions that I succumbed to 'IS IT A HOME PC?'.

Of course the answer is NO! Otherwise you get a 'Dimension' the low end of the line. You want an XPS or the next above that a Prestige. I think they lose a LOT of money doing that, directing users to a place they think they have to go to answer truthfully. What MORONs they are. LOL.

I'd have totally spent 500 more bucks to get a better case, better OS (XP) and better features (An actual DVD burner like I asked for).

It worked out OK, though because I went out and got a Samsung 20" LCD and plugged it up in addition to my 19" Samsung LCD:

rofl!

I have about 3 HD's resting on the floor of my case lol

maybe I should get them into a bracket? Is it dangerous?