Laptop Hard Drive Dilemma

[jsccarg]

Greets All! I have an NEC Ready 440T laptop that I need a replacement hard drive for. The problem is, I do not have a caddy for the drive and because of the limited production of this laptop I am unable to procure one. Is it possible to have the primary boot drive external? if so, any recommendations on what I should buy? If not, do you have any other solutions?

Thanks in advance...

 

[noellees1]

Look on ebay you can probably find a harddrive with caddy for fairly cheap thats where i would head just make sure you get written confirmation that the order will be well packaged and is already in working condition

 

[jsccarg]

noellees1 - because of the limited production the caddy is nearly impossible to find. I have checked eBay, Laptop repair and parts shops, and many other auction sites and have come to these forums as a last resort.

So either I need the exact same caddy, which I cannot find, some kind of an adapter, or is it possible to have an external primary bootable hard drive? If the latter is possible, I imagine I would have to do it in a scsi format which would require a scsi pcmcia card. Therein lies another dilemma, can you install a scsi pcmcia card without installing the driver so that it can be used to boot your primary drive with?

Thanks again for the assistance...

 

[noellees1]

Do laptop harddrives work the same as pc harddrives as in IDE connectors, surely if they did you could put this in a Pc and install drivers for such a thing and even program it to do what you want.
An external boot would require another harddrive i think.
A quick idea if you have USB see if it is possible to boot off a memory stick.

 

[Blujacket]

For jsccarg, all the Notebook drives I've dealt with have had a removeable caddy/bracket to hold the drive in securely. Maybe that is what you are seeing?

For noellees1, there is an adapter available that converts the 2.5" Notebook drive to an IDE cable, some include mounting brackets to put it in a Desktop/Tower case. The plug on an IDE cable is between 2.125" and 2.250" wide and the Notebook drive is 2.50" wide, so everything on it is smaller/arranged a bit different. I use a pair of them for cloning 2 drives using a Desktop computer.

 

[jsccarg]

- noellees1 - as Blujacket said you can purchase several devices to make a 2.5" IDE hard drive work for a desktop PC, but that is not what I am after. I am trying to make ANY hard drive work with my now defunct laptop. Because of the limited production of this laptop the caddy needed to mount the drive is impossible to find.

- Bluejacket - In my first post I mentioned that I am without the caddy for this laptop. You are correct that the removeable caddy/bracket is needed and as such I cannot find one because of the limited nature of this laptop.

***What I need is another solution for having a primary storage device with this laptop without the use of the internal IDE connector since I cannot find the appropriate caddy to replace the item.***

Thanks to all for your posts...

 

[jsccarg]

--Update-- The NEC READY 440T apparently was the same case and design as the Micron Trek 2. On another forum I was referred to a company that referred me back to eBay to search for the caddy under that brand. For those interested, the item can be found under:

"Micro Trek 2 Caddy"

It runs about $50-$150 depending on who's bidding.

Thanks to all for the help...