hey, I was just wondering what is the difference between a store bought already made external hard drive compared to a user made external HD made with a internakl HD and an external enclosure? I heard they were the same thing, but there has to be some differences, right? store bought ones are plug and play and user made externals arent right(user made externals have to be formatted or whatever? Im asking this because i think im getting the wd4000kd and making it external. But before i do this, i wana make sure it is the exact same thing as buying the store bought version of this external western digital hard drive(meaning all western digital did was take the wd4000kd and put it in a external enclosure and put a usb adapter on it and didnt add firmware or software or anything. wil my user made external be plug an play(is it built for plug and play and to be turned on and off every week to backup, or does western digital add something on to the wd4000kd when they make it external so it is plug and play etc.?
I've made quite a few external drives with bought enclosures. It is as simple as fitting the drive inside the enclosure and connecting it. Insdie the enclosure will be an IDE and power cable to connect to the HDD. Then just plug the HDD into the PC via usb/firewire, with windows 2000/xp you won't need any drivers. If you buy an OEM drive that is not formatted, then just attach it to the PC before hand and set it up before fitting it into enclosure. If you're using a WD disk then just download the lifeguard tool beofre hand from the main support pages, this auto detects and sets up a new drive for you.
What if i didnt download this, what would i have to manualy set up? Does this format the drive? Is this tool for internal and external drives? What is an OEM drive? and how do i know if its not formatted? what does formatted mean? And why do i have to set it up before fitting it into the enclosure?
OEM drives are basis brown box devices that come with no fancy packaging, manuals or software. They are the devices you would use to build a system. The drive would not be formatted or have a partition on it. The system partition is required for it to operate correctly, and this is then formatted as either FAT32 or NTFS you need to remember that these drives can be used with other operating systems as well as Windows, and the way data is written and stored is different. NTFS is what you are likely to be using, the tech details are irrelevant but without the correct setup the pc can't use the drive. You can do this setup yourself or by using the tools I described earlier, the latter being the easiest way. If you just stick it in the caddy and connect to the pc it will be useless. Regardless of all the above, all you need to do is load the lifeguard software, turn off pc, add the drive to your system (set jumper to either cable select or slave) as the existing drive is probably already master or cable select. Power on PC, run software, it will ask if drive is in system and if you want to format it and use as additional storage (say yes). Then power down, remove and fit into caddy, and away you go.
ok this drive wil be sata. you dont have to set master or slave on sata , right? ok here is the link to where im gonna buy the hard drive : http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822144423 it says oem. ok now to format this, wil i need to buy a sata cable and power connector or will the external enclosure provide one?
Ok by caddy, you meant the enclosure right? and by "adding the drive to your system", did you mean connecting the sata cable to a sata connector on my motherboard and power cable to Power supply,right? so i would have to first install this hard drive like i was normally doing if i were installing it internally?
ok all the sata enclosures at newegg : http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...nal+enclosure&srchInDesc=&minPrice=&maxPrice= Dont come with a sata cable. Well atleast i dont see it in the specs????
