Reddit reviews Vantec NexStar TX 2.5-Inch SATA to USB 2.0 External Hard Drive Enclosure

Remove the HDD from the Laptop, buy the 2.5" SATA Enclosure from Amazon for $8.99. Connect it via USB to another computer, move the files to another HDD as you wish, or use the current one as an External HDD.

Have Fun.

EDIT: I myself have the Vantec Nexstar Enclosure for my 2.5" SATA from my old laptop. I just use it as an external now. However, I do recommend this product to all my friends who spare 2.5" SATA's laying around.

EDIT 2: Like Zaydene said, MAKE SURE TO DRAIN ALL THE POWER FROM THE LAPTOP. YOU DON'T WANT TO SHORT CIRCUIT THE MOTHERBOARD.

>1. Turn off computer
>2. Unplug from wall
>3. Flip notebook to the bottom
>4. Remove battery
>5. Open laptop, press power button to discharge all electricity
>6. Flip back over
>7. Find a screwdriver
>8. Unscrew the phillips screws that cover a rectangular section of the laptop
>9. Gently pull out harddrive, making sure to disconnect it from the sata connection
>10. Congrats hdd is now removed

Yes, when buying a Mac I generally recommend purchasing RAM and hard drives separately. Apple upgrades are often twice as expensive and what they use is nothing special.

To upgrade a MacBook Pro from 4GB to 8GB RAM is $200 through Apple...or $43 through Amazon.

Plus you can pull the HDD, drop it in an enclosure, and voila, a Time Machine.

There are a few exceptions to my recommendation:

• Current iMac HDD cannot be easily upgraded.
  
• Current MacBook Air HDD cannot be easily upgraded. RAM cannot be upgraded at all.
  
• Pre-2010 Mac Mini HDD and RAM cannot be easily upgraded.

Enclosure: https://elsondesigns.com/pice-raspberry-pi-camera-enclosure[1]


HDD Enclosure: http://www.amazon.com/Vantec-NexStar-2-5-Inch-External-


Enclosure/dp/B002JQNXZC/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&qid=1393769540&sr=8-7&keywords=2+5+sata+hard+drive+enclosure[2]


PSU: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00DUTVOU8/ref=oh_details_o01_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Why sell it? I bought a hard drive enclosure and now I'm using mine as an external hdd. It comes in very handy.

I used my old PS3 hard drive (70-something gigs) and bought this:

Vantec NexStar TX 2.5-Inch SATA to USB 2.0 External Hard Drive Enclosure https://www.amazon.com/dp/B002JQNXZC/ref=cm_sw_r_awd_7L8Wub1TT8G5A
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B002JQNXZC/ref=cm_sw_r_awd_7L8Wub1TT8G5A

It includes a y-cable, the enclosure, and a pouch. So far, it works great.
Not sure if it works with SSDs though.

I don't know about that product specifically, but I use an old laptop hard drive in this and it works great.

I would buy this because it would be super useful to me right now.

Your post is a little confusing. Are you trying to use the Operating system on your dead laptops hard drive? That wont be possible because it has different system drivers, etc etc. Best thing you can do is plug it as a Slave hard drive (if IDE) or as another SATA hard drive internally. If you dont want to do all that because you either dont know how to or dont want to they sell enclosures that you can place the type of hard drive you have inside of it to access the data.

IDE ENCLOSURE LINK (only 5 dollars wow):

http://www.amazon.com/Drive-Aluminum-External-Enclosure-Capacity/dp/B000XPS3U6/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1341292741&sr=8-1&keywords=2.5+ide+hard+drive+enclosure

SATA ENCLOSURE LINK (only 11 dollars wow):

http://www.amazon.com/Vantec-NexStar-2-5-Inch-External-Enclosure/dp/B002JQNXZC/ref=sr_1_1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1341292753&sr=1-1&keywords=2.5+sata+hard+drive+enclosure

If you are able to successfully repair the OS, run a SMART test on your drive. Use HD Sentinel for the same. Trial version is fine.

Alternatively, remove the HDD and put it in an external casing. Now your int HDD becomes an ext HDD. Connect it to any other computer's USB port and run disk checks on the same.

Here's the one I bought on Amazon, and it works perfectly.

Sorry, I'm an idiot. I just realized I installed Debian on that disk before swapping it out for the SSD. So it was formatted in ext3 (the 7 GB partition was swap), which obviously can't be read by the default Windows programs. I just booted into Debian and copied out all the files I needed.

The external I got was this one. It actually seems pretty well-made so far.

Have you tried taking out the hard drive and putting it in an enclosure? (Something like this) Is it the hard drive that's dying or something else?

Honestly, I don't even bother with enclosures, but if you want one, this looks like a pretty fine one

> The RAM is already in the garbage truck, unfortunately.

Oh, well. Not quick enough this time, I guess. :-)

Some SSD drives come with the cloning tools like this video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BPdCS8p6LjA&list=UU6J6GEjvj01elglZQYo4t8g

Very easy to transfer everything over and boot your system on the new drive.

Then you can purchase a 2.5" Sata "harddrive enclosure" to insert your old Dell hard drive into and use as an external drive.

http://www.amazon.ca/Vantec-2-5-Inch-External-Enclosure-NST-210S2-BK/dp/B002JQNXZC/ref=sr_1_1/177-8820525-3975965?ie=UTF8&qid=1377218918&sr=8-1&keywords=hard+drive+enclosure+2+5

Just plug your external hard drive enclosure into your usb port to backup or transfer files.

Cheers

Get a USB hard drive enclosure like this one.

Edit: I have no idea if the specific product I linked is a good one. I just picked a random example off Amazon.

In theory this shouldn't be an issue (as long as you make sure to boot into your normal desktop drive when you turn the desktop on. You'll have a choice since the laptops harddrive will present itself as bootable to the bios as well).

I'd probably still recommend against it, however.

Swapping hard-drives is a fantastic opportunity to "start fresh" with a fresh OS install. While it's not nearly as necessary with today's OS's as it was with older OS's like XP, it's still good to clean out the registry of all the junk from old apps, wipe out installed apps you never use, etc.

It's also easier to just plug in the SSD and do a typical Windows install vs. ghosting an old drive to a new one. You could even get something like this to plug the old HDD into. This turns the HDD into a USB drive. So after you're done installing windows to the SSD, just plug the HDD in and copy the documents/pictures/music/etc you want to save off of it. Then you can just wipe the HDD and boom, now you have a USB Hard Drive to hold back-ups!

Any 2.5" SATA to USB enclosure would work, such as this one. A USB 3.0 one would yield minor improvements in transfer rates, but HDDs are pretty slow anyways so it isn't essential.

You should see some performance gains. The hard drive is probably a serious bottleneck for your computer.

Kingston SSD drives are super cheap. I haven't used one yet, so I can't make any claims to performance.

Something like this for the old drive.

For the OS, you can download the OS from the Mac App store, and do a fresh install. There should be plenty of guides out there on how to install OSX on a new drive. They'll be more detailed than I could be. I don't have any experience with Pro Tools, or how to install it. I suspect you can find a guide for that as well.

If anything goes wrong, you can still put your old drive back in and you'll be up and running.