Have you always dreamed of having 60 Gigbites of storage that is small enough to put in your pocket and take anywhere you want? Dream no more, in this guide I will show you how to make your own 60G external hard drive for less than 140 dollars. Below is the one I made for myself, look how small it is.

Computer technology advances as we speak, movies, games, music and even TV series can all be stored in your computer hard drive these days. Storage has quickly become a issue and people have realised that their old 40G harddrive is just never going to be enough.

Adding another hard drive to desktop computers is one solution, but for many laptop users or people who needs some mobility, getting an portable external hard drive is the way to go. However a 20G 2.5 inch pocket size external hard drive at Dicksmith will set you back at least 150 dollars. That's way too much for what it is really worth, I will show you how to make your own 60G external harddrive for less than 140 dollars, that's how much it costed me. The pictures are taken off my own 60G external hard drive.

First, you will need to purchase these two things above: a laptop hard drive and a USB2.0 external hard drive enclosure. You can get a 20G, 40G, 60, 80G or 100G depends on how much you need, but from my experience, it's never going to be enough. A 60G laptop harddrive like mine will cost about 100 dollar buy from ebay and an enclosure will cost around 20 dollars depending on the quality.

As you can see, an enclosure will typically come with a aluminium alloy case, the yellow circuit board, USB cable, driver CD, screws and a screw driver. Once you have done your shopping, making your own external hard drive will take less than 20 min!

Now carefully connect the laptop harddrive with the yellow circuit board, watch carefully where those golden fingers are going. There is a single pin in the middle, get him right then you are good! After you have connected them, slide the whole thing into the box.

Add the black cap and close the box by tightening the screws and you are done the hardware side of it, some of the enclosures don't even need screws. Now all you need to do is to format the hard drive. Used laptop harddrive will not need a new format, I am talking about a raw drive just out of its sealed bag.

For windows 98 SE/Me users:

1. Connect the USB hard disk to your computer via the USB cable, wait a few seconds until it is recognised by windows.

2. Get into "MS-DOS" mode,

3. Type "FDISK" and press "Enter"

4. Format the hard disk according to the prompts.

For windows Xp users:

1. Connect the USB hard disk to your computer via the USB cable, wait a few seconds until it is recognised by windows.

2. Go to Control Panel - Administrative tools - Computer Management, on the left side of the screen, click Disk Management, then you will see coloured blocks representing all the drives connected to the computer, select the USB hard drive, right click, and choose Initialise, then Format. 

Once the formating is done, restart your computer with the harddrive connected. You will soon find youself with gigbites of extra, removable storage.

Trouble shooting:

If somehow your harddrive can't not be detected by the computer, check the USB cables. Normally enclosures come with a 3 head USB cable, one of the head have shorter cable and it is solely used for getting extra power when you are using a hub or a PCMCIA card. So if the LED indicator is green and the hard disk is not running, plug the USB power cable into an empty port or avoid using hubs or PCMCIA cards if you can.

This is a guide for 2.5 inch laptop hard drives, however 3.5 inch desktop hard drives and their enclosures are also readily available from eBay, but they are heavier and requires their own power supply. However the basics are exactly the same.

I hope you enjoyed reading my guide, making an external harddrive is really this easy. Buy from ebay and never pay retail price again!