Making an external hard-drive from "scratch"

[jardinc]

I am currently in the process of purchasing a hard disc drive (Hitachi Travelstar 7K320 320GB 2.5" Mobile Hard Drive - 7200, 16MB, SATA-300, OEM) and an enclosure (abrent 2.5" USB 2.0 to SATA (Serial ATA)) to create a portable external hard drive.

The question is:

If I assemble these two components and connect them to my vista run computer will it play like a regular, of the shelf, external hard drive?

Any other tips on the assembly and purchase are welcome.

 

[vacunita]

No reason why it shouldn't.

Though the USB adapter you mention isn't an enclosure, but rather just a cable. So there's nothing to put the drive in. Just plug it straight into the cable, plug the power cable into the wall socket, and then plug the USB cable into your Vista Machine. Make sure the drive is siting on flat surface where it won't be moved or disturbed accidentally.





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Phil AKA Vacunita
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Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.

 

[paparazi]

It should work fine...the disk may need initializing/partitioning and formatting with Vista disk management tools before it is properly recognised in Windows.
Martin

On wings like angels whispers sweet
my heart it feels a broken beat
Touched soul and hurt lay wounded deep
Brown eyes are lost afar and sleep

 

[BionicJohn]

I've been using a similar set up for a long time, but the drive is a bit smaller at 40Gb. It's a very cheap way of making a portable drive (£5 for the interface, cable and housing), though it needs to be carefully looked after.
It works fine on WinXP, and Win2K before that - I've not tried it with Vista, but I can't see why it'd be any different.

It shows up as another hard drive:

Liverpool: Capital of Culture 2008
Anfield: Capital of Football since 1892
Iechyd da! John
Glannau Mersi, Lloegr.

 

[goombawaho]

Uh oh - running your external hard drive in a "blanket" will cause heat build-up. It's warm out - take its coat off.

 

[BionicJohn]

That was just for illustration purposes.

Liverpool: Capital of Culture 2008
Anfield: Capital of Football since 1892
Iechyd da! John
Glannau Mersi, Lloegr.

 

[jardinc]

Thank you very much everybody!!!