Want to back-up to external hard drive

It would be a SATA drive. If you dropped it, you caused the drive to fail not the enclosure. I have used the Startech enclosures with zero issues.

Delly10 said:

Awesome! I've noticed that there are ones that cost 3 times that much, although I don't see what's different about them.

BTW, could you tell me why an enclosure for an HDD and connector costs so much less that just a simple cable that has a SATA connector at one end and a USB connector at the other end? At best buy, I found this one that costs $25 to $30 depending on whether it's on sale: https://www.bestbuy.com/site/j5creat...?skuId=5091216

Almost every single enclosure that provides the same connectivity (along with physical protection) cost much less. Why is that?

I would say it is Best buy. I have not even walked into one in about 10 yrs.

I use one of these for a couple of SATA drives:
https://www.amazon.com/Sabrent-Tool-...IKX0DER&sr=1-3
This is similar to what I use for PATA drives:
https://www.amazon.com/JacobsParts-P.../dp/B004CRYMVU
/ref=sr_1_18?keywords=usb+pata+hard+drive+case&qid=1570751417&s=electronics&sr=1-18
A note: the mention of IDE refers to the integrated printed circuit board on the drives themselves, both PATA and SATA.

The business end of the PATA drives:
Compare 2.5-3.5" HDD Pins

What Is a SATA Cable or Connector?

jimbo45 said:

Hi there

why not construct your own -- if you've got the sata-->usb cables and can do even simple carpentry then just make an enclosure with the HDD's in it.

plug the HDD's via their sata adapters to a USB Hub ( 2 / 4 port depending on how many HDD's you want in the enclosure) that you can affix to the inside of the enclosure . You might also need an external power supply to the USB hub if your HDD's are the standard 3.5 inch things.

You can format these as RAID on Linux with mdadm or on Windows with storage spaces you can aggregate these into "striped drives" --although I'm not at all a fan of Windows storage spaces. On linux mdadm for software raid works a treat and devices can be of all different capacities.

I'm afraid too many people have just lost the art of making anything simple these days !!!! --have a go --it's easy and I'm sure you've got some odd bits of metal / plastic / wood around the place -- "Recycle for the planet !!" and save some money at the same time.

SATA-->usb3 cables are very cheap for example on amazon. or similar

here's one for around 3.50 GBP / EUR or around 2.90 USD (including tax).

https://www.ebay.co.uk/i/32382769123...SABEgJphfD_BwE

I just don't know where you got your 30 USD from !!!! --probably like those idiots going into places like PC world and paying 80 GBP (yes I've seen them in London doing that- perhaps the Brits have too much money these days) for an HDMI cable !!!! on advice from some barely literate salesman saying --you've got to have gold plated cables or you won't get anything from a "SKY Q" box. -- I wonder how much commission the guy was getting -- how come those sorts of jobs weren't around when I was a kid --I'd probably be buying Bill Gates's planes now !!!!!.

Cheers
jimbo

I was just looking at the Best Buy ad that I posted a link to. I also went in the store and they only had that one for $30 or so. People started telling me about "enclosures" and I just let the whole subject go for the past couple years because I figured that it was just a housing for the HDD and didn't contain the hookups to make it all work.

But...now that I learned more about it, I finally made an order. I got this one: https://www.walmart.com/ip/CableVant...Blue/594993139

I'm expecting it to arrive in the mail (or whatever the shipping method) on Oct. 22nd.