A few weeks ago I decided I needed to upgrade my Mac Mini’s internal hard drive from 200 Gig to a 500 Gig so I could finally take a stab at getting my media in one place. For under $100 – I bought a 7200rpm 2.5″ Seagate drive and had it installed in no time. After running a simple Time Machine restore from backup – my Mac Mini was set. I now could consolidate my media – but I was left with a 200 Gig drive that was going to realistically find a home in one of my card catalog drawers in my office.
Instead of just cataloging the drive – I paid around $50 and bought an enclosure and within minutes had a sweet portable FW/USB 2.0 drive that I will use to archive backups or to easily backup some of my other computers on the network (no Time Capsule here).
If you have extra drives laying around – these enclosures are super simple to assemble. You literally place your old drive on a tray, screw it into place, slide the tray into the enclosure, and viola – a portable drive.
Just a gentle reminder – if you have not backed up your data in the last month – do something right now. Backups can run in the background, are quick, and will save a lot of time/stress in the future. Drive failures will happen and with the cost of a hardrive or a simple enclosure – there are no excuses!
