Use HDD from old PC

[vince3]

I have a defunct PC with a 2x200GB Seagate SATA HDDs and I'd like to use one as an external drive(s) on the new PC for archiving and backup. I see that various caddies and cable only adapters are available. Apart from appearance is there any advantage over using a caddy rather than the cable approach? I might want to use the device on a laptop at some point.
Advice and possible product suggestions would be very welcome.
Thank you.

 

[rpstewart]

Caddies are generally a bit of a faff if you need / want to change the disk over whereas a cable adapter is much simpler to swap. On the other hand if you don't need to regularly swap drives a caddy is a more robust solution - no need to worry about shorting the underside of the drive for instance

 

[vince3]

Thanks for comment. I didn't know there was anything to short on a HDD underside! I might want to do one swap when I've recovered some odds and ends from one drive (managed most of my stuff before old PC collapsed completely) so a caddy seems the better solution.