external enclosure for A21p hard drive ?

[00aas]

First, I want to say thanks to everyone for such an amazing forum. You've kept my beloved A21p going strong for many more years than I had thought possible with some simple (and not so simple) fixes.

But now, I'm officially retiring the champion of laptops. She turns off after a few minutes of getting her started-- it may be an overheating issue, but after trying everything mentioned in the forum short of buying another system board, I bit the bullet and ordered a T60p (which is lovely btw).

So let me get to the point: I am now in desperate need of transferring my files from my old, quickly dying A21p to my T60p. Unfortunately, my A21p literally shuts off within minutes of startup, so i thought hey, why not get one of those cheap little external enclosures that converts 2.5" IDE notebook drives into an external USB2.0 drive, which I could then easily use to drop files into my T60p...

Unfortunately my A21p has the standard IBM Travelstar 32gb 2.5" eIDE drive that is 12.5mm high (FRU 08K9509), and pretty much every enclosure I've found will only take drives that are 9.5mm high or lower. SO can anyone recommend an enclosure that the A21p hard drive can use? Or if there's an alternative way of getting my data over to the new baby in my life, do let me know!

thanks in advance,
-Amish


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T60p
a dying A21p

[JHEM]

First, welcome to the Forum.

A21p, great old Thinkpad and sad to see it go.

WRT the enclosure being limited to 9.5mm HDs, there's no necessity to actually put the HD in the enclosure. Most of the time with these enclosures the HD connector is on the portion of the enclosure that you remove to access it.

Simply attach the bare connector card to the HD, connect it to the USB2.0 port on your new T60p and you're good to go.

Even in the case of clam-shell style cases, the HD will fit on the connecter, just don't put the cover back on.

Regards,

James

[jfsmith]

Amish,

USB enclosures are available for 12.7 mm high drives. Apricorn and others sell them. Here's one: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6817362001

[jfsmith]

Amish,

Sorry! I just re-read that Apricorn spec and it's for an SATA drive ...

[00aas]

Thanks guys, I did actually find a few listings on *bay that may work (if you search "12.5mm 2.5 enclosure", a few pop up), but I ended up not bidding and just borrowing a standard 2.5" enclosure that isn't supposed to fit to see if James's suggestion would work.

I used the Adaptec 2188700-- it worked well (other than the fit). It's an all aluminum casing with a removable face plate that is the connector. The HD did not fit in the casing, as expected. And at first, it seemed like there was no way the HD connector on the Adaptec enclosure would actually work either, since it's female connector has fewer openings (43) than the number of pins on the male IDE connector on the Travelstar hard drive (49). But if you line them up using the center pin as a reference, the connector slides in snugly (and the extra 6 pins on the HD were just not needed). I then used the USB cord to plug the connector straight into the T60p. The HD spun to life, it was recognized immediately, and I was transferring files within seconds. All done, and all happy.

It was a great temporary solution. thanks!
-Amish

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T60p
a dying A21p

[bigtiger]

I am glad it works out finally. Are you sure there are extra 6 pins? I thought there were only 4 extra pins.

[00aas]

You're absolutely right, bt, it's only 4 extra pins. On recount, the hard drive has 47 pins, not 49. Apologies for the confusion!
-Amish





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T60p
a dying A21p