Need advice on getting an external hard drive case

[dandingo13]

I've had two old school 80GB internal 3.5" Western Digital IDE HDDs since 2002 when I built my first computer. I believe they have XP on them and I'm now a Photographer and would like to use these as a backup.

A few years back I got a really cheap $5 Chinese 3.5" case and neither HDD would read on my Windows 7 laptop. I wanted to find out if a better case, something like THIS IDE CASE would work for me? I do have some stuff on these drives that I wouldn't mind saving but if I could just get them to work I'd be happy. Thanks in advance!

By the way, the reason I'm linking to Amazon is because I have a gift card and would like to avoid paying out of pocket.

[stilly]

When you buy a case for a HD then you spend money on some pieces you really do not need (like the whole interface...) I have one of these: http://www.amazon.com/Kingwin-Adapte...gwin+hd+to+usb

With the kingwin adapter you can use SATA, mini IDE and regular ATA/PATA drives. It should work for you.

I love it but I also had to replace the PSU on it with one from ebay, a guy was selling it and he said it was meant to be way tougher than the cheap ones that comes in these kits. I believe him, I have had it running for months at a time whether a drive was conencted or not adn the thing will not die. Best $20 more I spent for something like this. If you can plug in this cradle and make it work then that is all you really need. BTW, the power supply laster for a few months but I ended up leaving it on and did something one day and it just died. Then I found the one below and I have been impressed, I currently have it plugged into an internal BLUR-RAY ASUS drive that I burn disks on on a regular basis. It sits on top of my master system. It says Model: CS-120/050200-E

I had something similar to this: http://www.ebay.com/itm/EXTERNAL-POW...item53f2730335

But I am not sure what brand it was, I know that by looking at it is it UL and CE so that makes it better than China already...

[cpiaaq]

$60 will get you a new hard drive with external enclosure--much larger than what you have now. It makes no sense to spend money to keep old, small, soon-to-fail drives in use.

http://www.amazon.com/Toshiba-Canvio-Desktop-External-HDWC110XK3J1/dp/B008DW95NA/ref=sr_1_12?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1356989592&sr=1-12&keywords=external+hard+drive

[yellowsulphur]

Have you thought of using a hot swap enclosure. Hard drives are removable like usb sticks. This is how I set mine up.