Internal to external hard drive transfer kit USB thing-whatsit

[Giles]

http://img534.imageshack.us/img534/9975/spa0360.jpg

That's an image of the OLD hard drive, from my old laptop.
What I want to do, is turn that into an external hard drive. I've heard about the transfer kits that do that - I just don't know what to trust.

Help please :)

[JackOfClubs]

There are a couple of different ways. You can buy a case and put the HDD in that (the case must support 2.5" HDDs) and then plug it in via USB.

Or you can get a dock. Just put the HDD into the dock (just like and iPod dock), and then plug it in via USB. Also must support 2.5" HDDs.

Some examples of both: http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/Category/category_tlc.asp?CatId=2777&name=Hard-Drive-Enclosure

[Giles]

So Jack, would they both work. If I just plugged it in and stick it into my new laptop, it would just act like a normal external hard drive?

[enzenzz]

i believe it should work. usually having a new hard disk means that you need to format it first before windows would recognize it as a drive but since it's from an old laptop it should just pop up as another hard drive.

[JackOfClubs]

So Jack, would they both work. If I just plugged it in and stick it into my new laptop, it would just act like a normal external hard drive?
Yep. Should work. You might need to buy a separate USB cable though, but they are cheap. You might need to reformat the drive after you plug it in, but that can be done easily with a partition manager such as Partition Wizard Home Edition (clicky) (http://download.cnet.com/Partition-Wizard-Home-Edition/3000-2094_4-10962200.html?tag=mncol) to reformat it, but thats easy.

[Whisper]

Or you can get a dock. Just put the HDD into the dock (just like and iPod dock), and then plug it in via USB. Also must support 2.5" HDDs.
thats exactly what I do
it functions great