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I'm looking for a hard drive enclosure for an old IDE 5.25in hard drive (Quantum Bigfoot TS, 12GB). Most 5.25 enclosures I've found indicate they are for DVD/CD IDE drives. Would they still work with this old hard drive?

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Can you post some enclosures, so we can take a look? Otherwise, any answer would be too general. – AndrejaKo Jan 17 '11 at 20:59
Wow, I didn't even know 5.25" PATA drives existed... – Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams Jan 17 '11 at 20:59
@AndrejaKo - I was looking specifically at this one - geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=A2296&cat=CSE – Hans Parshall Jan 17 '11 at 21:03
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3 Answers

up vote 2 down vote accepted

Hans, Taken from the link you posted

http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=A2296&cat=CSE

The A2296 features the Cypress AT2+ chipset and supports a 5.25-inch DVD/CD IDE drive or a 3.5-inch IDE hard drive up to 500 GB capacity

EDIT: Since I have one of those hard drives and an enclosure with the Cypress AT2+ chips, I can test it for you, Yes the Cypress AT2+ chip works with that hard drive.

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@Moab - The question is whether an old 5.25 IDE HDD would work as well. I am well aware of what the website indicates. I am under the impression (perhaps wrongly, hence the question) that they do not mention 5.25 HDD capabilities for marketing reasons rather than technical ones. – Hans Parshall Jan 17 '11 at 21:19
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Key words would be "up to 500 gb" Cypress chipsets are some of the best and compatible chips for IDE, which this enclosure has. "old IDE 5.25in hard drive" does not tell us much, you might edit your post to include more information. – Moab Jan 17 '11 at 21:47
@Moab - I understand; edited as requested. – Hans Parshall Jan 17 '11 at 21:53
Oh god, A Quantum Big Foot, I thought I was the only one that still had one of those, in my closet and works like a new one. How would you like 2? :-> The cypress should recognize it, no guarantee though, since I have one of those hard drives and an enclosure with the cypress AT2+ chips, I will test it for you, I will post results back here in a while. – Moab Jan 17 '11 at 22:20
Yes, Quantum Bigfoot 12.7AT drive works on the AT2+ Cypress chip. – Moab Jan 17 '11 at 22:31
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up vote 1 down vote

Many of the DVD/CD cases will work. I have used them in the past and most were fine but I did encounter one that we never could get working. Even then, the reseller said it would but could not get it going. Good documention for the enclosure may help.

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up vote 1 down vote

A 5.25" IDE hard drive fits in the same bay as 5.25" optical drives, and uses the same IDE interface. Therefore, the drive and enclosures you describe should be compatible.

Perhaps the reason the enclosures are advertised for optical drives, is because IDE has become largely deprecated from use with HDDs. The same could be said for optical drives as well, but their migration to new standards has generally lagged behind HDDs.

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It could be that the enclosures are too slow for HDDs. – AndrejaKo Jan 17 '11 at 21:05
Some IDE controllers do not support hard drives, onlt Optical, but the one he linked to does. – Moab Jan 17 '11 at 21:16
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