Stuart Jansen wrote: > On Tue, 2007-02-06 at 09:54 -0700, Kenneth Burgener wrote: >> I was looking for a simple external HDD enclosure and I couldn't >> remember, off the top of my head, if my standard desktop hard drive was >> the 2.5" or 3.5" size. So I pulled out the ruler, and measured the >> drive. It is roughly 5.5" x 4" x 1". It would seem to me that the 3.5" >> size is what I am looking for, but the drive is not 3.5" wide. Why? > > It sounds like you actually need a 5.5" enclosure. Desktop systems > usually use 5.5" drive because they're faster and cheaper. Most laptops > use 3.5" drives because even though they're slower and more expensive, > they're smaller. Really small laptops use 2.5" drives. I surprised you > only found 3.5" and 2.5" enclosures. The good news is that 5.5" > enclosures are usually much cheaper than 3.5" enclosures.
Really? I went to Newegg.com and visited their external enclosures category. (http://tinyurl.com/yr4wy7) Almost ALL of their enclosures were the 3.5" and a few were 2.5" (which is why I assumed the 3.5" is what I wanted). I did scroll further and found the 5.25" enclosures, but these were most commonly reported as being for CD-ROM size. Sites such as this http://tinyurl.com/ysqmed report "This aluminum 3.5" USB 2.0 hard drive case allows you to easily use your desktop hard drive as an external hard drive." This 3.5" enclosure http://tinyurl.com/u429r reports that it's dimensions are 8.86" x 4.72" x 1.5" which should be more than adequate to hold the dimensions of my drive. Which brings me back to why would a labeled 3.5" enclosure hold a 4" drive? I wonder if it was a marketing blunder that has propagated, or maybe 3.5" is referring to the actual metal disc inside the HDD. But if that were the case then calling a 5.25" enclosure for CD-ROM drives seems silly since the CD-ROMs are 4.5". /* PLUG: http://plug.org, #utah on irc.freenode.net Unsubscribe: http://plug.org/mailman/options/plug Don't fear the penguin. */
