Okay, I finally bit the bullet and bought a new PC so I'm now running a windows i7 2600k with 16GB of memory and a gfx card that I won't mention as it sucks. Now my obligatory I've got a new computer dance is over I need help. The smurfing smurfing PC has a smurfing warrenty void sticker on it so I can't open it just yet to put my hdds in it. So I need to get a HDD Dock or Enclosure (to be honest I'm not sure what the difference between the two is) but have no idea where to start looking, other than I'd guess it would need to be externally powered and have a usb connection so i can connect it to the pc. I'm in over my head on this one so any advice, suggestions would be appreciated. (ignore the smurfing thing its a new thing rather than try to reword a sentence when I want to swear I just put the word smurfing in instead surprisingly it works)
I'm going to guess that this is a second hand / refurbed computer, so it's not brand new but it's "new" to him? In fact, I'm going for a refurb because otherwise it doesn't make much sense - a brand new PC would have more modern hardware, and you wouldn't care if a second-hand PC had a "warranty void" sticker on it, would you?
its new to me, A refurb but considering before this I was using an q6600 processor with 4 gb of ram its a major improvement and was also the quickest way to upgrade every with the ability to upgrade in the future but i need a way of accessing my old data and don't really want to be running yet another pc all the time
If it's for 3.5 inch disks, then it'll need external power, 2.5 inch disk docks/enclosures are normally powered through the USB cable. I've been running a cheap CIT USB3 dock for a couple of years now without issues. If it's just a 2.5 inch drive, I'd just get one of those cable adapters that does SATA to USB, but for a dock, even something like this should be OK - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Orico-Hard...TF8&qid=1506792093&sr=8-5&keywords=usb+3+dock
at the moment I'm looking at something like this 'ORICO 9558U3 Aluminium 5 Bay 3.5" Hard Drive Enclosure' which I can pick up for between 130-150 according to the gf. (shes got 3 drives she wants to put in it as well) so the larger the capacity the better oi guess
3 USB 3.0 enclosures should cost around a tenner each. I’ll assume you get some USB3 sockets but buy a USB3 powered hub too to work around that.
okay problem solved I brought 2 individual cases for the 2.5 inch ssd's so that we can use them when out and about with the laptops etc and then two - 2 x bay enclosures for the four 3.5" drives. One for the gf's and one for mine. It worked out slightly more expensive then running seperate cases but seeing as we've brought new (refurbed) Pc's and new monitors this week already we figured smurf it we may as well just get everything new, then its a new system and theres no messing around. (though the moment i can remove those stickers I will be I'm going to upgrade those gfx cards come hell or high smurfing water)
