Macworld Forums: Convert Internal to external Hard Drive - Macworld Forums

I have an old PC and ripped out it's 80 gb hard drive. It is a Seagate Barracuda SATA IV series. I want to make this into an external hard drive to use for Time Machine. I look and found kits to convert SATA and SATA II hard drives to external, but none for SATA IV. Does is it really matter? Can I just use a SATA II kit? And if not, does anyone know of a site where I can order a kit for my SATA IV to convert it to an external drive? Better yet, does anyone have any good sites with a bunch of different kits for some good prices? Thanks a lot.

soccerson114 said:

Are you sure about the type and model of the drive. There is not such thing as SATA IV drive, that I am aware of. There is just SATA I and SATA II. Are you sure it is a SATA drive? What does the data connector look like? Something like the one on the right or the left?




The one on the left is a PATA or standard ATA or IDE connection. The one on the right is a SATA connection.

It was the connector on the left, but the label says ATA IV. Here are the pictures I took of the hard drive...





I know the 4 pins on the left are for power, and the 40 pin connection looks like it goes to the connection on the right of smax013's picture, but I don't understand why the label says ATA IV. But it doesn't really matter. What kind of kit should I get to convert the above hard drive to an external hard drive?

soccerson114 said:

That is a parallel ATA drive. Also commonly referred to as an IDE drive. It is NOT a serial ATA (aka SATA) drive. Sometimes they are referred to as just ATA drives (as in ATA/100 systems, etc).



I am not sure specifically why Seagate calls it ATA IV. It could be just part of a model name. It could also refer to it being an ATA-4 (aka Ultra ATA/33) drive (see ATA def on Wikipedia).



Here are a bunch of IDE drive enclosures for 3.5" drives on NewEgg. Here are a bunch of IDE enclosures for 3.5" drives on OWC (a more "Macentric" online store).