I have 2 Older IDE HD's sitting around the house and I'd like to make them into external HD's. First of all will the IDE HD's work in one of the external cases. Second I have heard there are some issues with them not having a fan in them and they over heat. T or F Third Anyone know of a good brand external case to get for these. Would rather use them as a his/hers drives then throw them out... Any advise will help Jigdish
Your IDE hard drives can be used in an external case. Just be sure the case you buy uses the IDE standard and not SATA. Also, be sure it has the connection type you want (USB or Firewire). Some cases are better than others. External cases with fans do keep hard drives cooler than ones without them. If you're planning on leaving them on at all times, get the case with a fan. If you're using them off and on, one without a fan should be sufficient. As far buying one, check out Newegg, TigerDirect, or Geeks.com.
You shouldn't have any problem, I have turned 4 of my old IDE drives into externals. If you will be using the external hard drive to copy data then turning it off, then heating problems will be of no concern. If you plan on keeping the external drive on for more than a couple of hours you can point a room fan on it to keep it cool. But sometimes I forget to turn the external off for several days with no fan, and haven't had any hard drive failure. I use the generic external cases (cost less than $20.00) and they work good and no drivers are needed windows xp or vista should recognize them automatically.
