Adding a 500g drive to an older laptop.

[Noozer]

My old laptop is an HP N5495. It has a pair of USB 1 ports, a firewire port
and one free cardbus slot. The second cardbus slot is housing a gigabit LAN
adapter.

I want to use this machine as a file server, as it has a good battery and we
don't really use the machine. I've got Debian installed on it and it seems
to work OK.

I want to add a 500gig drive to this machine, but my drive is SATA. I'm not
having much luck finding a reasonably priced Firewire/Sata enclosure here in
Calgary.

So, what I want to know is...

- Are there any eSATA or USB2 cardbus cards that AREN'T higher than the
slot? My gig lan card is in the top slot and it's thicker where it sticks
out of the laptop. This means that any card that goes into the bottom slot
can't be any higher than the slot itself.
- Can someone suggest a cheap enclosure that holds a SATA drive and has a
firewire port, here in Calgary, or with reasonable shipping?

 

[jinxy]

My old laptop is an HP N5495. It has a pair of USB 1 ports, a firewire port
and one free cardbus slot. The second cardbus slot is housing a gigabit LAN
adapter.

I want to use this machine as a file server, as it has a good battery and we
don't really use the machine. I've got Debian installed on it and it seems
to work OK.

I want to add a 500gig drive to this machine, but my drive is SATA. I'm not
having much luck finding a reasonably priced Firewire/Sata enclosure here in
Calgary.

So, what I want to know is...

- Are there any eSATA or USB2 cardbus cards that AREN'T higher than the
slot? My gig lan card is in the top slot and it's thicker where it sticks
out of the laptop. This means that any card that goes into the bottom slot
can't be any higher than the slot itself.
- Can someone suggest a cheap enclosure that holds a SATA drive and has a
firewire port, here in Calgary, or with reasonable shipping?

Have you looked at http://www.tigerdirect.ca/ I use them alot
in Ontario. You will have to check their shipping rates as you are a
little farther from them than I am. good hunting.
-J

 

[Noozer]

Have you looked at http://www.tigerdirect.ca/ I use them alot
in Ontario. You will have to check their shipping rates as you are a
little farther from them than I am. good hunting.

Yup... Nothing really worth mentioning. Another site that is worth looking
at is geeks.com - but nothing I can use this time.

It looks like the best thing to do is just find someone to swap my SATA
drive for an ATA drive... I've got lots of ATA enclosures I can use.

 

[kony]

My old laptop is an HP N5495. It has a pair of USB 1 ports, a firewire port
and one free cardbus slot. The second cardbus slot is housing a gigabit LAN
adapter.

I want to use this machine as a file server, as it has a good battery and we
don't really use the machine. I've got Debian installed on it and it seems
to work OK.

I want to add a 500gig drive to this machine, but my drive is SATA. I'm not
having much luck finding a reasonably priced Firewire/Sata enclosure here in
Calgary.

So, what I want to know is...

- Are there any eSATA or USB2 cardbus cards that AREN'T higher than the
slot? My gig lan card is in the top slot and it's thicker where it sticks
out of the laptop. This means that any card that goes into the bottom slot
can't be any higher than the slot itself.
- Can someone suggest a cheap enclosure that holds a SATA drive and has a
firewire port, here in Calgary, or with reasonable shipping?

Might not be what you wanted to hear, but I'd sell the
laptop and buy some random $100 system to use as the
fileserver. A desktop system has longer life expectancy, as
well as cheaper $/GB for a fileserver.

 

[Noozer]

Might not be what you wanted to hear, but I'd sell the

laptop and buy some random $100 system to use as the
fileserver. A desktop system has longer life expectancy, as
well as cheaper $/GB for a fileserver.

Well... I've got two desktop systems and neither would be as useful as this
laptop.

Laptop has it's own "ups" (aka battery), it's low power, has a built in
display/keyboard, is easy to stuff into a corner and forget, etc...

The desktop machines are large, don't have a monitor, pump out a bunch of
heat, etc...

Other than the drive size, the laptop wins by a large margin. I'd rather
sell the desktop machines and upgrade/replace the laptop.

 

[jameshanley39]

My old laptop is an HP N5495. It has a pair of USB 1 ports, a firewire port
and one free cardbus slot. The second cardbus slot is housing a gigabit LAN
adapter.

I want to use this machine as a file server, as it has a good battery and we
don't really use the machine. I've got Debian installed on it and it seems
to work OK.

I want to add a 500gig drive to this machine, but my drive is SATA. I'm not
having much luck finding a reasonably priced Firewire/Sata enclosure here in
Calgary.

So, what I want to know is...

- Are there any eSATA or USB2 cardbus cards that AREN'T higher than the
slot? My gig lan card is in the top slot and it's thicker where it sticks
out of the laptop. This means that any card that goes into the bottom slot
can't be any higher than the slot itself.
- Can someone suggest a cheap enclosure that holds a SATA drive and has a
firewire port, here in Calgary, or with reasonable shipping?

I love your philosophy on the laptop, the battery as a UPS and the
rest of it. Laptops are problematic to fix though.

You want to convert SATA to firewire. But maybe you can convert your
Firewire to USB2.. I didn't find much but somebody called
parts_on_sale on ebay.co.uk is selling what is advertised as a
firewire to usb cable. It's worth loooking into firewire to usb2
adaptors, they really should exist!

How about SATA->IDE to Firewire. And instead of looking at
enclosures. Look at adaptors.

I bought a few USB-IDE adaptors some time ago. They were good ones.
When SATA came out, there were USB-SATA adaptors..
But I think I got a SATA-IDE adaptor.. and added into the boxes of USB-
IDE adaptors. So I can attach any SATA or IDE drive to USB.

If you don't restrict yourself to enclosures, i.e. use adaptors, then
your options may be alot better.

An enclosure is essentially a box with an adaptor and a fan.

Maybe for hard drive used by the file server you'd want the enclosure
though, for the cooling. Unless you can find another way. Or you think
it will be fine without a fan.