Hooking up an ATA/IDE HD

[Poohblah]

I pulled an old hard drive with an ATA/IDE interface out of a computer; I was wondering if anybody could give me help hooking it up to my notebook PC, if that is even possible?

Thanks.

[LeftyAce]

Get an external enclosure for it: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817155601

That'll give you a USB connection to the laptop. Even comes with backup software, but that isn't too useful if this is an old/small drive.

[Freakitchen]

LeftyAce's enclosure recommendation is a good one - but, if you only want to hook this drive up on a temporary basis to recover files, this IDE to USB adaptor would be a cheaper option.

http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=USB2IDE-N&cat=HDD

FK

[Poohblah]

I can build an enclosure myself, that's not too hard.

If I hook up the drive to my PC with the cheap cable, will it just appear in my computer? Can I write files to the drive or delete them from the drive with that cable?

[LeftyAce]

It will show up as a "removable drive" in "My Computer" and you can do anything you would do with a regular harddrive. If you're running XP, you won't even need drivers. If you do need them, the cable comes with a CD with drivers (for windows 98, this is required, I think).

[Poohblah]

Alrighty thanks a bunch.