Questions about hard drive enclosures

[MissDoodah]

Hope this is the right forum to post this.

I have a hard drive from my dead G5 that I'd like to use. It's the stock Western Digital that came with the G5. (250 mb) I tested it in another machine, and the drive is just fine.

I bought an enclosure at Best Buy. First I bought a 2.5 by mistake. Returned that, got a 3.5 and the drive fit perfectly. Except the enclosure was defective (the usb connection was loose and flaky).

This one:

http://tinyurl.com/yjhhnwn

So I returned that and ordered this one from Wal Mart (half the price):

http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=10363723

It arrived, and my hard drive won't fit. There are screws around my hard drive, and it might fit if those screws weren't there, but I don't know anything about removing screws from an internal HD.

So now, I need to make a FOURTH try on this crazy enclosure.

Can anyone tell me the difference (besides price and maybe quality) between those two enclosures? Did I miss something? Both are SATA 3.5 and I can't understand why my HD wouldn't fit the Coolmax.

And can anyone recommend an enclosure that's on the cheap side? This isn't going to be used that often, so I don't need a Mercedes. Also, I'd like to be able to buy/order from a store that has local return, given my bad luck so far.

That basically means Best Buy, Target, Wal Mart, Kmart...if I start ordering from online sources and keep getting duds, the shipping is gonna eat me up.

Thank you.

 

[skorpien]

Sometimes hard drives have screws in them to hold them in place or make them fit better in the original computer. If that's the case with your hard drive, then it's perfectly safe to remove those screws to make it fit better elsewhere. Would you be able to post a pic of your hard drive, with those screws visible? It might be as simple a solution as that.

 

[ftaok]

Can't answer your questions about quality or what not, but if you are willing to purchase over the internet, I would suggest trying newegg or Amazon to buy a Macally case. They aren't cheap, but they're just about bulletproof.

They have all sorts of enclosures for whatever connections you want, USB2, FW400, FW800, eSATA, etc.