A younger friend of mine dropped an USB mini Iomega external hard drive.After examining it,I see the the wires to the, inside of the USB plug are broken.But the good news is the 3 1/2 inch plastic piece unplugs from the hard drive.The bad news is I cant find the part.Ive been trying to find a cheeper one on ebay say 10 GB to use the plug.Possible slave the drive so he get all his video games back.......................Any thoughts,Ideas?

You can just rip it open, and plop it it to a new enclosure.

It's gonna either be IDE or SATA.

Not hard. Send it my way, if you're squeemish...

but it's not a big deal.

Does the hard driv elook like it's got two rows of pins, or sorta like a cartridge connector

[This message has been edited by FieroRumor (edited 08-27-2011).]

How about you take it apart and put the drive itself into another enclosure? It is my understanding that most or all of the external drives are just internal drives with proprietary enclosures.

It should be either a 2.5" or 3.5" drive SATA drive. A new enclosure will be about $20-25.

.

[This message has been edited by Doug85GT (edited 08-27-2011).]

I usually recommend people using an external enclosure instaed of "slaving" because the latter can involve people unfamiliar with techie stuff having to enter BIOS, chaning drive settings, possible jumpers and cable issues...and other "fun" stuff during booting...

quote Originally posted by FieroRumor: You can just rip it open, and plop it it to a new enclosure. It's gonna either be IDE or SATA. Not hard. Send it my way, if you're squeemish... but it's not a big deal. Does the hard driv elook like it's got two rows of pins, or sorta like a cartridge connector

Yes your right FieroRumor, I have gone into the Biose befor, but Ive never had good luck attempting to slave an extra hard drive,(even with the biose set to what it should be), so Im trying to avoid that option at the moment.He has the hard drive at the moment and I beleave it has two rows of pins.So now my question is, does a new enclosre contain that plastic piece that plugs into the hard drive? it has the USB plug attached to it.The case isnt broken,but if a new enclosure has the piece,I might try that.Right now its not realley that Important, serves him right for allso breaking the hinge on an $850 Laptop his mom baught him 8 months ago.The external HDD I baught him was less than 3 months old when he broke the plug.Grrrrr......One Tera bight down the tubes.

If you need a good external enclosure, go with something like this:
http://www.amazon.com/Sabre...ooling/dp/B001PHLMAE

It has the older IDE configuration like you described (2 rows of pins) and the newer SATA (small connector) connection also.

[This message has been edited by IMSA GT (edited 08-27-2011).]

You can always get one of these guys:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/USB...&hash=item3a68a44b89

Basically, you can connect old school IDE drives, mini IDE (laptop HDD) and SATA.

I recommend using this sorta thing for data recovery only, and not for long-term use w/ external drives...

The enclosure mentioned above this post is very good. (black one w/ fan)


Just make sure the one you get accomodates the drive you ave (you said it was a "mini" external, so I'm thinkin' it's a laptop sized IDE drive (2.5 inch)