Can I get a Hard Disk Enclosure for SATA and IDE Drives?

Hello, I was going to buy a Hard Disk Enclosure to use or to see whats on three old Hard Drives that I have. I was going to buy this as I had seen it recommended:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00KCCWGMQ/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?smid=A103TZ89DUFDUW&psc=1

I see form reading the specs that its for SATA Drives. The old drives I have one is SATA  the other two are IDE.

Someone suggested a Hard Disk Docking Station?

I am running Windows Ten Pro 64.

Does anyone have any thoughts on this?

Thanks

I don't think you will find an enclosure that will take both IDE and SATA drives. The best you can do is get a USB adapter that works for both IDE and SATA. Something similar to the one below.

It comes with a power adapter that will work for 3.5 drives

https://vantecusa.com/products_detail.php?p_id=90&p_name=IDE/SATA

I couldn't find it on the amazon uk site but there are equivalents. You need one with a separate power supply brick if you have any 3.5" drives as the power supplied by the USB port alone is not enough.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=SATA%2FIDE+TO+USB+3.0+Adapter&crid=29BXXN74U8BWN&sprefix=sata%2Fide+to+usb+3.0+adapter+%2Caps%2C202&ref=nb_sb_noss_2

There are plenty of IDE enclosures (as well as adaptors) on Amazon, just put 'IDE Enclosure' into the searchbox.
However they do tend to be for the smaller 2.5" laptop drives.

This docking station is one that will take both IDE and SATA drives of either size:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Tccmebius-TCC-S862-UK-External-Docking-Station/dp/B075ZF845X

(And it's about the same price as the enclosure that you were looking at).

Edited by Nukecad, 16 February 2024 - 11:36 AM.

JohnC_21 is likely correct in that you're unlikely to find any good docking station that combines both interfaces rather separate ones that handle each, but he's already covered that.  My comment is that old mechanical drives, and even SSDs, that have been inactive for a long period of time, on the order of years, can become problematic in retrieving data from them.  Over time the magnetic field on mechanical platters will slowly fade and may become difficult for the drive's hardware to read.  Mechanically the bearings may become stiff or the spindle motor grow weak leading to seek and timing errors.  On SSDs phantom discharge can slowly drain the capacitor cells because no electrical circuit is perfectly isolated from its environment - and some are better designed and built than others.

If you find you're having trouble reading the data on your drives, you might try Kali Linux which you can find here.  Follow the instructions on creating a bootable media whether it's optical or USB flash drive.  Use the Live media rather than the installer.  You'll want to boot it into Forensics mode, as it will mount only the drives you wish in read-only mode so they can't be overwritten.  You have two options here.  Either the Testdisk suite which includes "photorec" which can recover all kinds of files up to a certain level of damage, or the more advanced "ddrescue".  The manuals for Testdisk and photorec are here.  The ddrescue docs are here.  Read them carefully.

You can also possibly use Window's "chkdsk" with the READ-ONLY non-destructive bad block scan, but I've not really had a lot of luck with it with badly degraded drives.  chkdsk documentation is here.

Any commercial recovery software is going to be expensive, but there are some alternatives available that could be more user friendly than the command line programs above.  Right now the only one I'd recommend is in the process of a major upgrade, however, so I don't recommend the current version which is extremely slow, but the newer, more performant version isn't released yet.

Edited by h_b_s, 16 February 2024 - 11:42 AM.

Just a thought: Most enclosures aren't designed to be opened and closed on a regular basis, although the ones I have would probably not object to be taken apart a dozen, or so, times, I wouldn't expect the clips to last that much longer.

Just a thought: Most enclosures aren't designed to be opened and closed on a regular basis, although the ones I have would probably not object to be taken apart a dozen, or so, times, I wouldn't expect the clips to last that much longer.

Added thought, many cheap enclosures also don't handle heat build up well.  They're only designed for very occasional use for short periods of time.  Otherwise the heat build up will kill a mechanical drive fairly quickly (often inside a year), and many heavily used SSDs won't last long either.  You're usually better off with vertically arranged dock or bare adapter cables because the heat dissipates naturally rather than being trapped by a plastic or metal enclosure (NVMe drives are a different beast, the newer ones require a heat sink at the least).

Example photo  (note not an endorsement by me, I don't this model so can't say if it's reliable or not): 

Edited by h_b_s, 16 February 2024 - 12:48 PM.

I have decided to get the Docking Station that Nukecad suggested thanks all.

Edited by JD2015, 18 February 2024 - 07:51 AM.

I hope that it's a decent one then and does what you need.

Let us know how you find it in use, always handy to get an opinion on stuff.

Edited by Nukecad, 19 February 2024 - 07:19 AM.

I hope that it's a decent one then and does what you need.

Let us know how you find it in use, always handy to get an opinion on stuff.

It works fine and for the money It was good. I was able to open two of the three drives. The third one I at least got a good mangnet from it.    I did a quick format on the other two.

Can anyone recommend Free Backup Software to put on them?

Thanks

Edited by JD2015, 22 February 2024 - 07:50 AM.