Using & Modding Hard Disk Drive Enclosures

Here are links to guides about using and modding external hard disk drive enclosures. If you have written a HOWTO yourself (or if you know of tips and tricks not mentioned here), please submit a new entry.

Make an External HDD from Old External CD/RW	A pretty straight forward conversion of an old external CD-Writer to a more useful external hard drive.
External Hard Disk Hack	Have a busted hard disk enclosure? This shows how you can replace the damaged enclosure with a clear plastic book case.
Piggyback an External Drive	Are you tired of pulling out your portable drive and connecting it whenever you need to back something up? Attaching an external HDD to the lid of your laptop isn't the most elegant solution but very convinient.
Extended HDD Enclosure	How to connect two IDE units to a single 3.5" external drive housing and to replace the single and very short IDE cable provided with the enclosure (the one that connects the hard drive to the very controller) with a conventional (long and grey with 3 connectors) Ultra ATA IDE cable ( use a 'Y' Molex extension cable to be able to power the two drive). This mod is really quick, easy and useful to do and ideal for users that travels a lot.
Maxtor HDD Caddy 80GB	Giving new life to an old hard drive caddy, by substituting the 80GB drive with a 200GB drive.
Peeze 3.5-Inch External Drive Enclosure	Build Your Very Own External USB2 HD.
Seagate 3.5-Inch Pushbutton Backup External Hard Drive	This illustrated guide explains how to disassemble the enclosure.
Western-Digital MyBook USB-Drive	How to open the external drive and replace the a broken HDD.
Western-Digital MyBook 250GB	How to customize the LED color.
External CD ROM Drive to HDD Enclosure Conversion	Hot Swappable IDE, how to make your HDD a USB drive. Did you ever add or remove a HDD in your PC? If so, you should know that you need to close your PC before removing or adding anything (otherwise it can broke the hardware). Here is a simple way to do that, with an old usb external CD ROM.
External Enclosure Fan	How to add a fan to an external HDD case (in Italian).
The Geekster Moleskine	Modding an external HDD into a Moleskine notebook.
Alcor Miro Corp. AU6390	Teardown report and disassembly photos of a mini USB-HardDisk.
i-rocks	How to put a 2.5" laptop hard drive into a portable case.
LaCie External 3.5'' HDD Enclosure	Troubleshooting tips for an external FireWire hard disk drive enclosure (with and internal parallel drive). This HOWTO explains in detail how to free your hard drive from its firewire enclosure and then either swap cases or install your drive into a G4 or G5.
N.N.	Recycle a laptop hard drive using it in an external USB enclosure.
IcyBox USB 2.0	How to put a cooling fan into and external hard disk drive enclosure (in German).
IcyBox USB 2.0	This tutorial explains how to put a personal logo into the case of an external HDD enclosure (in German).
Zelda Drive 1.0	NES Cartridge Hard Drive Mod: how to put a laptop hard drive into a Nintendo cartridge to make your personal external storage enclosure.
Epson P-3000 MultiMedia Storage Device	When the 40GB storage is definitely not enough, here is a way to swap the drive with 2.5-Inch laptop HDD.
FreeCom Classic Series(CD-RW)	How to convert an old external CD writer into an external 3.5inch hard disk drive enclosure.