[Fanfoot]

Okay, so I've got lots of these 2.5" hard drives around (I work with a lot of video). And I tend to buy the drives naked from newegg, and drop them into some USB enclosure. Currently, I like the Coolmax Leather ones:



which are nice and small, and easy to open, etc. And look nice. They're also relatively cheap, as are virtually ALL of these, at $19-$29.

But we're starting to see pretty good 1.8" drives, like the 5,400 rpm SATA ones from Toshiba that will be coming in 120GB and 160GB sizes in December. Already we can get 80GB/120GB/240GB PATA 4,200 rpm ones from Toshiba. I've seen the 120GB model going for around $120.

Given the sizes of netbooks, it seems to me that the 1.8" form factor is a great fit. Yet, I don't know where to get any external USB enclosures for these drives. newegg has one, but I'm unclear what its for--says it has a ZIF connector which isn't compatible with the drives (PATA) in the iPods for example.

You can find 1.8" drives already in (unopenable) enclosures out there. I've got one of the 80GB Apricorn Aegis drives:



Anybody know anything more about this area?

[ytsejam1138]

How about something like this?

http://www.cubeternet.com/servlet/Detail?no=27

or

http://insidecomputer.stores.yahoo.net/ ... 0hadi.html

eBay is also full of them:

http://shop.ebay.com/items/_W0QQ_nkwZ1Q ... omZQQ_mdoZ

[Fanfoot]

Thanks, that's helpful. Looks like the Toshiba and Hitachi and Samsung 1.8-inchers (I guess Hitachi has exited this business) all use different connectors. These are the PATA ones anyway. Looks like the Toshiba and Hitachi use ZIF connectors (actual pins) and the Samsung drives use something else. There are converters for these to standard IDE if you want that, but that isn't so great for keeping the size down. So you have to buy enclosures that are compatible with the drive you want. Kinda stupid.

We'll see what happens when the Toshiba SATA drives come out next month. Hopefully they just have a standard SATA connector, and the enclosures are all multi-vendor...

[strider_mt2k]

I scavenged a 1/8" drive out of an (almost) discarded old Magellan Roadmate 700 GPS demo unit a year or two ago and it turned out to be the same Toshiba 20gb drive used in iPods!

Now that I look I think it was indeed these folks I bought mine from too.:
http://insidecomputer.stores.yahoo.net/ ... lhadr.html

It's a bit slow doing transfers, but I can play divx files from it with zero problems and it's been very reliable.
Nice little case you get with it too.

I use it teamed up with a bootable flash drive that runs Norton Ghost for my Mini 9's SSD backup image nowadays.
Roughly 30 minutes to image, roughly 20 minutes to restore, with a little room to spare.

It's definitely worth it to use them, even if they aren't large capacity.