Hard Drive Enclosure How To:

[onebxr]

In today’s fast paced world we rely on our computers more than ever. What most common users forget is that being silicone and plastic computers break. Information is lost, leaving you with an expensive piece of useless hardware, and you in a panic. However, there is hope and it is not to late to do something about it. Backing up is easy and fast, how you do it is up to you. Many users backup to CD’s, DVD’s, flash drives, tape drives, zip drives, or floppy’s. The possibilities are many and it is up to you to chose how you backup your important information. I have chosen to go the external enclosure/hard drive route. In the following review I will try to explain how to assemble, connect, and use an external hard drive as a backup. I accomplished a 250gb backup for under $100.00. YMMV

Today I am going to try and explain how to set up an external enclosure. First things first, I had to pick out a enclosure, seems easy but with so many choices this was probably the hardest part of the process. I ended up getting the metal gear box. At this point you need to make sure you are getting the right connections that will fit you best. I went with a SATA internal connection and a SATA or USB external connection. There are other choices such as pata/ IDE/ firewire/ usb as far as connections go. Do you want passive cooling? What color do you want? What size of enclosure? What size HDD 21/2 in. or 31/2 in.? Here is where you have to make choices. Newegg.com - Galaxy METAL GEAR Metal Gear Box II 3506SASP-Black External Enclosure - Retail

Another Choice you have to make is what hard drive. My enclosure takes a 31/2 in drive. You can chose a 2/12 in. enclosure and use a 21/2 in. HDD. But for this mod I will be using the 31/2 in Western Digital SATAII Caviar 250gb HDD. I chose this one because it was pretty cheap and I really don’t have any brand loyalty to hard drives. Newegg.com - Western Digital Caviar SE 250GB 3.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM

OK to begin, the order and wait process. This is probably the worst part of any build. As most of you know Newegg.com is probably the best at what they do, so this is where I went to get my goodies. My order arrived in good time and in good condition.

The Box



The contents



The contents disassembled



Connection point for the hard drive



Hard Drive



Take the hard drive and slide it into the enclosure



Top cover, put this in place to gve the hard drive support while putting the sides on.



Backside with hard drive attached. (note 4 screws attached here to keep the hard drive from slipping around)

Back plate cover



Connections (power, USB, SATA)



All hooked up and ready to roll.

Hooked up and running. If your computer does not recognize the hard drive the enclosure comes with an installation disc. I hit cancel and started Acronis 9.0(more on this later)



Woot! nifty LED



Acronis, started and working hard.



As you can see this is probably the easiest and most cost effective way to go for large file storage. In all it took me about 10 minutes from unpacking to Acronis. I must say I have been using this external hard drive for about a month and it has worked well. I have not had a problem with it and I backup about once a week.

Acronis 9.0 home edition has been covered expertly by Quakindude here, I will not even try to top that review. It was very well done in my opinion. I still use it as reference when I have my own questions while using Acronis. Acronis is very user friendly and can be used by anyone. I am computer special ed., so if I can use it anyone can.

-Richard Womble (onebxr)

[Quakindude]

Very well done Richard! I'm glad you've had such enjoyment from using Acronis. I know that for me, I'll never be without back up media or a program again.