External hard drive enclosure

[blacktop89]

So, here's the situation. I own a computer business. I'm looking to get a "test pc" so that when customer's bring in their virus infected pc's, I can hook their hard drive up as a slave on the "test pc" and scan for viruses. I've been looking at some cheap desktops because the only thing I will be using the pc for is for scanning hard drives.

Now, I've always wanted to have a laptop to carry around to customer sites because of the ease of diagnosing networking problems among other things. So that brings me to this. If I end up getting a laptop, could I just purchase an external hard drive enclsure so that I could still scan hard drives for viruses? I'm not familiar with how these things work. About all I know is that most of them connect to a PC via USB. Any help is much appreciated.

 

[timmer]

i beleive u could a 30$ hdd cooler and enclosure would do it and it hooks up throught usb heres one from newegg.com
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817145746
looks good too

 

[pc_boy]

those are pretty cool, except i don't think they are for swapping HD's, they are used more to transfer/back up large files...

 

[blacktop89]

I should still be able to hook up hard drives though....right? I mean, I don't get customer's bringing in virus infected PC's every day. I probably average about 1 or 2 per week. And because it's USB, wouldn't XP just recognize each hard drive that I plug into the enclosure? It is plug-n-play right?

 

[TheHeadFL]

That looks like the Adaptec unit I got from Best Buy.

Yes, it would work exactly like you think it would. It just becomes another hard drive.

 

[blacktop89]

Well, I will get the laptop and the external hard drive enclosure. Thanks for all of your help!