->  WC>> a USB external interface box, a kind of external adapter setup.

->  RJT> Are they making them different?  Sticking different electronics 
->  RJT> on the drive itself?  I've seen those things advertised,  but 
->  RJT> haven't really looked at them price-wise to see how they compare 
->  RJT> with regular drives (though sometimes they do seem to get pretty 
->  RJT> close) and I have no idea about the innards of them.

-> What's "different" it the external cases!  All fancy gaudy
shapes and sizes,
-> and mostly put together with no screws nor any way to find out how to get the
-> innards out without destroying something.  Since most of the drives require
-> +12V, an external adapter must be used also.

 I saw several External Conversion cases for Standard IDE drives
yesterday at Fry's Electronics. As far as I know even the Drive included
cases use Standard Hard Drives inside.
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