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chcameron chcameron
 
January 15, 2009 03:19 AM

Can I remove my old laptop's CD/DVD drive and use it as an external drive on my newer laptop?

I have an old Gateway laptop and recently bought a new Dell Mini 9 (no cd/dvd drive) and I was wondering if I can take my old computer's drive out and use it as an external drive on my netbook. I have read about external enclosures, but I'm not sure if they work with laptop drives. Or would it just be easier to buy a new external drive (the cheaper the better)??
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albanian albanian
 
 January 15, 2009 03:30 AM
I don't see how you could get cheaper than this source:
(but you could keep looking)
It is an enclosure for slim (notebook) cd drives.

Source(s):
http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=BLK-USBEXT-NBCDCADDY&cat=CSE

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chcameron chcameron
 
January 15, 2009 03:40 AM
Thanks for pointing me to this!

Another point I should add I plan to use the external drive to boot a new OS onto the Dell. Will using an enclosure such as this allow me to boot from the drive? It should, right?

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albanian albanian
 
January 15, 2009 03:41 AM
Remember that external drives are (mostly) USB connection drives. I don't think you can boot from them unless it is a second OS because something has to run the USB connection.

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chcameron chcameron
 
January 15, 2009 04:35 AM
Thats what I worried about, Im thinking of following the instructions at the link below, and they say to "boot it using an external DVD drive". Thoughts?

http://uneasysilence.com/archive/2008/10/13519/

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wangxu94 wangxu94
 
February 15, 2009 02:19 AM
I don't think you will be able to boot from an external drive. Check your BIOS to see if there is such an option

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