Why are external HDD enclosures advertised as 3.5"

[Kenneth Burgener]

Kenneth Burgener wrote:
> I was looking for a simple external HDD enclosure and I couldn't
> remember, off the top of my head, if my standard desktop hard drive was
> the 2.5" or 3.5" size.  So I pulled out the ruler, and measured the
> drive.  It is roughly 5.5" x 4" x 1".  It would seem to me that the 3.5"
> size is what I am looking for, but the drive is not 3.5" wide.  Why?


According to the Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_disk)...

"The size designations are more nomenclature than descriptive: for
example, a 3.5" drive is named for the size of the floppy disk whose
drive bay size it was originally designed to occupy; the drive itself is
actually 4" wide."


Wiki knows everything   ;-)



Kenneth