Plug and Play for all those naked drives

[TRSmith]

I'm getting quite a collection of full/old hard drives that have been replaced with fresh ones over the years. I keep them all as a backup to the backup. They sit there, labeled and tidy in their static-free bags, waiting for that weird emergency that would require me to access them.

Of course, the nasty part about all those drives is that they aren't in any kind of enclosure. So if I DID want to access the contents, I'd have to open my MacPro and put one in a drive sled. At least until last week.

I bought a USB Drivedock from Weibetech and it's the perfect solution. For about $50 U.S., it will read:
3.5" SATA
3.5" IDE/PATA
2.5" (notebook) SATA
2.5" (notebook) IDE/PATA

Simply plug the thing into a power source, connect the appropriate cable to the drive, and connect to computer via USB. Power on and the drive mounts. Very cool. Especially during those times when you're swapping/replacing drives but want to maintain something from a drive you're removing.

For instance, I just ordered an SSD for my system and applications drive and was able to remove a couple older drives knowing that I could access the stuff whenever I wanted.

Just thought I'd mention it if you have a collection of old spinners laying around.

Best,
Tim

 

[Jorgen Udvang]

Very convenient, but where did you find it for $50?

 

[JoelM]

They have cheaper drive docks at Frys that do the same.

Joel

 

[LizaWitz]

I've started using the Seagate GoFlex FreeAgent drives. The nice thing is, they're basically just bare drives in a plastic case. The "cables" are really adapters. so, you can get a firewire cable, which is firewire on one end and SATA on the other.

You could use these cables with any bare SATA drive if you wanted...

You can get USB 2, USB 3 and Firewire cables now.

They've promised a thunderbolt cable, but haven't yet shipped it.

The drives are relatively cheap too, and so we use them as our time machine backup drives.

 

[weinschela]

The Wiebetech is about $45 on Amazon. I have a Wiebetech portable RAID, and it is built very well. Also, their support is excellent. There are also cheaper solutions for connecting old drives via USB.