External Hard Drive Enclosure

[NavyNJ]

Well, it's that time of year again, when the "new" booty from Christmas arrives, and the "old stuff" seems to find its way to the Goodwill or other charity collection bin. This year, we discovered several very old and no longer used laptops. Having sine been replaced with tablets, iPads, etc., these were too old to revive or update (although I did repurpose one to be the always available household music station for Bluetooth speakers, etc., and act as sort of a super iPod with iTunes, Spotify and Pandora loaded).

My question regarding the 2 hard drives (std 3.5" SATA drives) I salvaged from the other laptops is this: Do I/Should I buy hard drive enclosures with fans for them, or can I skip that feature for this size drive (versus the larger 5.25" drives from a desk top)? Will the 3.5" drives generate enough heat to warrant that feature?

Thanks and Happy New Year all!!

[Computer Corner]

Typically, Hard Drives do not require fans. You should be fine without them regardless of the size.

-Heath
CFLGeek.com

[TrudyM]

I asked my son and he told me to get a small external hard drive and not try to reuse the ones from my old computer. Got a passport brand from Amazon and it is very small and holds a ton of files so I can back everything up and still have room for a ton of movies. Just a thought.

[NavyNJ]

Thks for the reply, Geek....I kind of figured as much. I just recalled seeing that enclosures for the larger drives often came with fans. Just about any of them will do, for sure. And also, thks Trudy for your thought.....it's really just kind of a "thing" for me to fool around with this stuff. Most of the time, I'll weight the cost vs benefit of doing it with parts or buying something new and go with the easier choice as you suggested. Kind of why I like to build AR-15's from scratch, too! :icon_wink: Happy New Year!!