PC hard drive in external case connected to MacBook

madtonic · Dec 30th, 2007, 11:04 PM

The ac adapter on my Gateway notebook went for the third time. Since the notebook was a couple years old and the lcd screen was going I decided to buy a new one. I have taken the plunge into Mac's.

The only problem I have is that I had lots of pictures and music files on the Gateway notebook's hard drive that are really important to me. Unfortunately the battery is dead with no way of charging it.

Is it possible to remove the hard drive from my PC notebook, place it in one of those external cases and then attach it to my MacBook? I asked one person and they said it might work but I could never write to that drive. Is that true?

I would love to be able to do this rather than buy another AC adapter (which costs more than an hard drive enclosure) because then I could use the drive as additional storage space.

If this is possible, could someone recommend an affordable enclosure that would work with a notebook hard drive. Correct me if I am wrong but I think I have to buy a 2.5" enclosure.

If anyone could help me out with those things it would be greatly appreciated.

chas_m · Dec 31st, 2007, 06:04 AM

	Quote:			Originally Posted by madtonic
	The ac adapter on my Gateway notebook went for the third time. Since the notebook was a couple years old and the lcd screen was going I decided to buy a new one. I have taken the plunge into Mac's.

YAY! Welcome to the club!

	Quote:
	The only problem I have is that I had lots of pictures and music files on the Gateway notebook's hard drive that are really important to me. Is it possible to remove the hard drive from my PC notebook, place it in one of those external cases and then attach it to my MacBook? I asked one person and they said it might work but I could never write to that drive. Is that true?

YES you can take the old drive out of the Gateway and put it in an external case (I suggest a case with both Firewire and USB2 if possible -- fw is faster by a large margin for mass copying). The Mac should be able to read from it JUST FINE. Some older Macs can't write to NTFS-formatted volumes, but I believe that's no longer true and probably not relevant in your case anyway. Once you've gotten your files off of the drive, I'd suggest erasing it and using it for storage as you've mentioned.

	Quote:
	If this is possible, could someone recommend an affordable enclosure that would work with a notebook hard drive. Correct me if I am wrong but I think I have to buy a 2.5" enclosure.

I'm not sure it matters much, apart from what I said above. If you have an Intel Mac laptop (and you mentioned "new" so I'm assuming you do), then USB2 only will work if you can't find a good price on USB2/FW.

Here's a perfect example of what you want:
Newegg.com - macally PHR-250CC Aluminum 2.5" USB & 1394 External Enclosure - Retail

phobic · Dec 31st, 2007, 08:12 AM

What you heard is right - Macs can read NTFS partitions, which is almost certainly what your old laptop would be partitioned as, but they cannot write to them. For copying data you shouldn't have any problem.
I bought an external enclosure from tigerdirect.ca, I bought this one:

CoolMax 3.5" SATA IDE, USB 2.0 and Firewire Aluminum Hard Drive Enclosure CD-311 SATA Combo in Canada at TigerDirect.ca

Which is expensive because it does firewire and USB 2.0 and will take either IDE or SATA drives. You may need some kind of adapter because your laptop drive will most likely be 2.5" and any regular hard drive enclosure will be 3.5". You could buy a 2.5" enclosure I suppose, but then you're limited for use. Here's the adapter at Tiger Direct:

Kinamax Laptop 2.5-Inch to Desktop 3.5-Inch IDE Hard Drive AdapterConverter ADP-IDE23 in Canada at TigerDirect.ca

Dec 30th, 2007, 11:04 PM	#1
madtonic New Neighbour Join Date: Dec 2007 Posts: 2	PC hard drive in external case connected to MacBook The ac adapter on my Gateway notebook went for the third time. Since the notebook was a couple years old and the lcd screen was going I decided to buy a new one. I have taken the plunge into Mac's. The only problem I have is that I had lots of pictures and music files on the Gateway notebook's hard drive that are really important to me. Unfortunately the battery is dead with no way of charging it. Is it possible to remove the hard drive from my PC notebook, place it in one of those external cases and then attach it to my MacBook? I asked one person and they said it might work but I could never write to that drive. Is that true? I would love to be able to do this rather than buy another AC adapter (which costs more than an hard drive enclosure) because then I could use the drive as additional storage space. If this is possible, could someone recommend an affordable enclosure that would work with a notebook hard drive. Correct me if I am wrong but I think I have to buy a 2.5" enclosure. If anyone could help me out with those things it would be greatly appreciated.

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Dec 31st, 2007, 08:12 AM	#3
phobic Full Citizen Join Date: May 2005 Location: Windsor, On Posts: 173	What you heard is right - Macs can read NTFS partitions, which is almost certainly what your old laptop would be partitioned as, but they cannot write to them. For copying data you shouldn't have any problem. I bought an external enclosure from tigerdirect.ca, I bought this one: CoolMax 3.5" SATA IDE, USB 2.0 and Firewire Aluminum Hard Drive Enclosure CD-311 SATA Combo in Canada at TigerDirect.ca Which is expensive because it does firewire and USB 2.0 and will take either IDE or SATA drives. You may need some kind of adapter because your laptop drive will most likely be 2.5" and any regular hard drive enclosure will be 3.5". You could buy a 2.5" enclosure I suppose, but then you're limited for use. Here's the adapter at Tiger Direct: Kinamax Laptop 2.5-Inch to Desktop 3.5-Inch IDE Hard Drive AdapterConverter ADP-IDE23 in Canada at TigerDirect.ca