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View Full Version : Housing transplant for external hard drives.

smackcakes
11-09-2006, 02:36 AM
Recently I decided to get housing for an IDE hard drive I wanted to use with my new computer (SATA). Now it is an external USB2 drive and looks and works great.

The thing is I already have and external hard drive (a pre-built Maxtor one) which connects via firewire. This one works great, though I have to say it isn’t terribly attractive, and looks a little at odds with the new drive.

So I couldn’t help but wonder if the pre-built drive might actually just be an ordinary IDE drive + housing like the one I made, and if it might be possible to transplant the essential part into new USB2 housing to match the other drive.

I searched Google quite a bit but couldn’t seem to find very much information on this. So I was wondering if anyone here had any knowledge of the difference (if any) between pre-built external drives and ordinary drives + housing which might be helpful?
lots
11-09-2006, 12:57 PM
Don't take this as fact, but most every external drive made by WD, Maxtor, and the like, are just internal drives with an enclosure made by the company.

Meaning it should be possible to pull it out and stuff it into another enclosure.
maX_Andrews
11-09-2006, 09:25 PM
The drives should be completely interchangeable, the only difference between enclosures is the chipset that is used and the method of connection to the drive. Larger enclosures will use the typical cabled connections, where smaller enclosures will save space by using a direct-to-backplane system in which case the chipset board plugs directly into the plugs on the drive. But yeah, all the internal drives are typical OEM drives, depends if they are IDE or SATA though...
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11-09-2006, 09:25 PM
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