I have an old laptop HDD that I want to use as a portable-HDD and I was wondering if any one knew if it's possible to wire it to USB and is so how to wire it to USB
Humm you would hawe to gett hold off some kind of ide-usb ic then wire it, then get it to work on your os, sounds like ****t loads of work to me. In norway you can get a usb 2,5 case for 400 kr aboutly 40£
You cannot wire it yourself unless you have way too much time and are willing to spend many times the amount of a store bought adapter. The reason for this is because to hook the hdd up to a USB cable, you need a USB enabled microcontroller, you would need to write a program on the micro controller to talk to the computer's USB port. The microcontroller also has to be able to talk with the hdd. The microcontroller must interpret the requests from the computer and translate them to something that the hdd can understand. To do this at any reasonable speed, you would have to be quite good at programming or have a very fast microcontroller, or booth. Your best bet is to buy a ready made adapter and then buy and adapter to turn the laptop hdd connector into a standard ide port (this adapter you can probably make yourself, all it does is replace the connecter to a different style one and add power lines.) So, if you want a big time consuming, expensive project, then by all means, go ahead. But it would seem much more reasonable to buy a pre-made one. (I think that it would be quite cool for you to make the adapter, I am just pointing out that it is not as simple as you might think.) (Also, the USB port could not supply the power demands of the hdd. you would need an external psu to power the hdd. The external psu comes with a pre-made ide - USB interface.)
Actually it depends, a laptop HD doesn't need THAT much power, and there are external enclosures that doesn't use external power.. http://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?id=10106 for example. However, if you're using non-powered hubs and stuff, or have a weak usb power line...
i did this, but with a slot loading cd rom drive, for my radio project. I bought a mini-ide to ide adapter (which also has a slot for power) then I bought a 3.5" external enclosure and I hooked the ide adapter up to the enclosure. The software worked great, and It would allow both cd rom drives and hdds. the enclsure cost me about $35. They make 2.5" and laptop drive enclosures but The 3.5" one is compatible with all sorts of drives incase I replace the laptop drive with anothe hdd or what not.
