f13.net

Ok, I want to get some data off old hard drives from older Win 9x/XP systems. 
I go and buy a hard drive enclosure figuring it will be a cost effective thing to do AND it'll let me use the older drives as backups.
I bring an enclosure home from Staples and open it up, ready to do some transferring. 
Its totally different in the connectors!  No 4 prong power bit, or the 39 pin connector.  Just this wee little 1 1/2 inch long connection thing.

I take it HDs have changed since I last bought one?

Can I get an adaptor to connect the old drives?

If not, does anyone know of an HD enclosure that works on a Mac (meaning no drivers to install and whatnot..) and allows the old standard of hard drives to be used in them?

Yep, the new starndard is  SATA, the old standard is IDE, or PATA. Take the enclosure back, get a new one for IDE/PATA. SATA stands for SERIAL Advanced Technology Attachment and IDE/PATA stands for Intelligent Drive Electronics or Integrated Drive Electronics or PARALLEL Advanced Technology Attachment.

As for Mac, enclosures really aren't OS dependent that I know of.

Only in the sense that it's better to get one for the Mac that supports Firewire, if you care about squeezing out an extra bit of performance.

^^ Well yeah, but if I was after performance I wouldn't want one to use old HDs anyhow.  Its more for data retrieval and in the event my iMac's HD dies again.  The tech mentioned modern high capacity HDs tend to have a much higher failure rate than they did in the past.

(Though I am sure they were pretty back before self parking drives.. that would be in the sub 100 meg days however.)

But I may use it as a backup for the system (not too needed as I have a G5 mac), or use it for Bootcamp as the XP or even a 98 drive if possible.  Be nice to get Warlords 3 and some of the 9x games running again....

But thanks for the info!  I guess I will just go hunting on Newegg.