Have any of you put internal IDE hard drives into external enclosures/bays to run them outside of your PC? What do you use or recommend?

I picked up a couple of WD 200 gig IDE HDs when they were on sale and I'd like to use one to back-up my system and another for my digital photos and video storage. I have a shelf above my PC and I have 1 or 2 available USB ports and one firewire port. The firewire I'd like to keep free because I connect my digital video camera to it.

I'm not sure if I'm calling it the right name, but can I get a 4-port USB hub to connect to one of my available USB ports to then connect the HDs to my PC?

Many thanks. Oh yea, any pics of your external storage set-up?

 

I have an external firewire box that holds 2 drives and it works great. Its got 2 firewire ports on the back so you can use it and plug another firewire device into the back of it. It works as fast as any of my internal drives and is plug and play. I bought it on ebay for about $60 plus shipping. You can also get a 4 bay case as well.
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...Name=WDVW&rd=1
Heres the guys store.
http://stores.ebay.com/Superldg-Stor...toreviewQQtZkm

 

I buy almost all my stuff from newegg.com. They are almost always the lowest in price and have the best customer service on the net. Check out http://www.newegg.com/ProductSort/Su...SubCategory=92 for what you're looking for. I bought the $30 bytec one a while ago. Any one of them should be fine.

 

Thanks for the links and info.

The 2 bay enclosure listed on Ebay, do you know if an OS (such as XP Pro) would "see" the 2 seperate HDs inside since there is only one connection to the PC?

 

The computer will see each drive separately, even with just the one cable. I use 2000Pro and i did not need any sort of driver, just plug it in and go.