HDD to USB

Yes, there are a lot of enclosures in the market.
Some of them can take IDE & SATA HDD and convert them to USB, but all of the enclosures need a power adapter. because you need to supply the HDD with 12V and you can't get it from the USB.

I have some enclosures at work, they are good.

USB IDE Enclosures

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/category/category_slc.asp?CatId=1204&name=Enclosures

[i]Most USB Drives need to be set to Master not Cable Select when used like this.[/i]

SATA Enclosure

http://www.cooldrives.com/sahadrenfors.html

Only thing to remember is that these enclosures allow a drive to overheat so if you need to use it for long periods of time you should use an Actively Cooled Enclosure like the MX1 from Antec

http://www.antec.com/Believe_it/product.php?id=NDc=

You also need to Dismount the Drives before turning off the computer that they are connected to or unplugging them so use the Dismount Option under Linux or the Safely Remove Option under Windows.

If you do not dismount the drives before unplugging them or turning off the computer the Partition Tables on the drive will get corrupted and then you'll have to pay to recover the Data. Also don't move the drive after unplugging it till the Platters have had time to stop spinning and most importantly [b]Do Not[/b] move the drive while it is running.

The 2 biggest killers of Mechanical HDD's is Vibrational Damage or Overheating. So if you keep that in mind the drive will last a very long time in the enclosure. If you ignore that the drive will report as Blank/RAW and your Data will be gone and the drive can not live as long as it otherwise should. ;)

Col

es, you can buy a kit to convert an internal hard drive to an external hard drive. There are a variety of connection options, including serial, USB and Firewire. One company that makes these kits is Addonics.

I recently had an old computer with a IDE hard drive that I wanted to install as a second drive in a new PC. But the new PC only had SATA connectors on the motherboard. So I bought an external hard drive enclosure kit at my local Radio Shack for $39. You remove the drive from the old computer, pop it in the enclosure, and then you can use it as an external drive. Just plug it into the USB port (mine came with a USB cable) of your laptop or any other computer.

This is a really good idea if you have a spare drive sitting idle, since you can use it as either portable media or a backup device.
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