How do I use my old hard drive as a new external?

[adonis7]

I have a macbook, and it had a 160gb hard drive. I recently bought a 500gb hard drive and an enclosure.
I installed the 500gb hard drive and put the 160gb in the enclosure, plugged it in, and it never appeared. WTF? I also tried the whole disk utility thing and what not, but it wont recognize my old hard drive...

The reason why I want to do this is because I want to transfer a bunch of files from my old HD to the new one (not settings or anything, just specific files), and after this is done, i want to use my old hd as an external...

So what do I do? I dont have time machine, cause im on Tiger and not leopard

 

[Wie Gehts]

hmmmm...i just went the same route....new 500gb and an external enclosure for the old drive. haven't done anything yet though...hope it works.

i don't know.. i know that while shopping for an enclosure, some say they are IDE and some say they are SATA. have no idea whether or not this means anything other than the way the enclosures controller handles data....or something...(i'm guessing)

these little 2.5" external enclosures are mostly, if not all, usb powered and come with a double usb cable to plug into two usb ports...one for data, one for power....

 

[Erendiox]

Macbooks use SATA drives. If your enclosure is IDE it won't work. Is the drive in the enclosure spinning up? Enclosure lights turning on?

 

[Wie Gehts]

then how come the external dvd burner i got supposedly has an IDE controller (at least thats what their tech support told me)
that works....well at least it did for a year and a half, which is why i called tech support and told me it was an IDE enclosure.

wait a sec....i see what you mean. since the drive is sata it needs a sata enclosure, but the computer will connect to whatever kind of drive..sata, ide, etc

*edit* just checked my enclosure and see its sata <phew>

 

[Erendiox]

wait a sec....i see what you mean. since the drive is sata it needs a sata enclosure, but the computer will connect to whatever kind of drive..sata, ide, etc

Yea, your computer will connect to either interface, but the HD, or the Optical Drive, needs to be matched up with the correct interface to fit in the enclosure.

 

[fireshot91]

There are two connections (Well, there really are more, but two that can be used right now).

IDE, and SATA. They are both cable/connection types.
If your cable does not fit into your hard drive and enclosure, that means you bought the wrong enclosure. All Macbooks use 2.5" SATA hard drives.

I don't think that's the problem with the OP. I think his hard drive is spinning up, but OS-X doesn't recognize it.

Did you try booting off your external hard drive?
To do this, you restart your computer, and keep holding option while your machine is booting. Then see if your external hard drive is listed there.

 

[adonis7]

Yeah I can hear the hard drive spinning up, it just doesn't recognize it...

I will try now to boot off of my external

brb

 

[adonis7]

Yeah I can hear the hard drive spinning up, it just doesn't recognize it...

I will try now to boot off of my external

brb

Oh wtf, i just plugged in my external and it worked

thanks anyways guys