Like from a laptop hard drive. We make an external USB drive from a computer and laptop HDD

External drives are very convenient for storing photos, music, videos and copies of important files. They can be used not only with computers, but also with various media devices to expand data storage, as well as with Wi-Fi routers as low-cost network management solutions.

Off-the-shelf hard drives often contain unknown drives, and the enclosures are not designed to be reused. Building your own external hard drive can sometimes be a cheaper solution that best suits your needs. And if you have an old internal hard drive lying around, you can turn it into a great external hard drive for just $10.

Selecting an internal hard drive

Internal interface

Modern hard drives have SATA interfaces; in addition, they are easy to identify, because... they have 7 contacts. If you buy a new hard drive, it will definitely be a SATA hard drive. If you are using an old one, it will probably be a 40-pin PATA (IDE) hard drive. Most cases support one or the other, so it's critical to know which internal hard drive you're using.

Size, height and volume
3.5-inch hard drives are used in desktop computers, while 2.5-inch hard drives are commonly used in laptops. 3.5-inch hard drives are larger in capacity than 2.5-inch hard drives, so if you want 2TB of storage, you should only choose a desktop hard drive. However, 2.5-inch drives are much more suitable for portable use. While most 2.5-inch drives are 9.5mm in height, some are as tall as 12.5mm. Before choosing a case, pay attention to the overall dimensions of your hard drive.

Speed rotation

7,200 RPM and 5,400 RPM are the most common rotation speeds for internal hard drives. 7,200 rpm spindle speed drives are faster than 5,400 rpm spindle speed drives, but they tend to run hot and use significantly more power than 5,400 rpm spindle speed drives. If you're choosing a faster hard drive that runs hot, the ability of the case to cool the drive will be an important consideration.

Choice housing

Plastic against aluminum

Aluminum cases are much more durable than plastic cases and are also inherently better for hard drive cooling. If you plan to use your external hard drive 24 hours a day, 7 days a week or plan to get a drive with a rotation speed of 7200 rpm, then it is recommended to choose an aluminum case. Plastic cases are usually cheaper than aluminum cases, but are not as good at cooling. Occasionally you can find a plastic case with a fan, but their disadvantage is that they are quite noisy, especially if the hard drive in such a case is located on a table. On the other hand, if you are using a 5400 RPM laptop hard drive for portable use, then a plastic case will do just fine.

External interfaces
The choice of frontend depends largely on how you want to use your drive and how much you plan to spend. A huge number of cases only support USB 2.0. Most media devices and routers only support hard drives with a USB port. USB 2.0 is the most suitable choice, it is compatible with the widest range of devices, but has the lowest performance of all interfaces currently available.

USB 3.0 is currently the fastest interface available for enclosures, and is also backward compatible with USB 2.0. The downside to USB 3.0 is the fact that it is not as widespread as USB 2.0.

FireWire is more common in Mac computers than in other personal computers. FireWire 800 (EEE-1394b) is faster than USB 2.0, but slower than USB 3.0. For the best experience with Macs, FireWire 800 is the best choice until someone comes out with an affordable case with ThunderBolt.

eSATA performs better than FireWire and USB 2.0, but it is the only interface that does not supply power to the hard drive through a cable and requires a separate network adapter. eSATA hard drives also have well-known connectivity issues. If for some reason you do not use only this interface, then it is recommended not to use it as the only interface.

Assembling an external hard drive

Assembling an external hard drive is a fairly simple process. Typically you need to insert the internal hard drive into the case and secure it with screws.

Like this. Once assembly is complete, insert the hard drive into your computer and format it.

As if installing an OS is not something complicated, and my opinion is that it is enough to be friends with the computer and have two more hands in addition to your head - one right and the other left. To install the OS on your computer, you need or.

But what to do if you have neither one nor the other, the optical drive does not work, or you have a netbook? After thinking a little, I remembered that I have an external USB pocket for an HDD and a free old 2.5' HDD too. In general, if you have a pocket hard drive, you can make it bootable.

There are utilities for this purpose that can be used to do this, but I decided to use standard Windows tools.

There are a lot of descriptions and videos on the Internet, but, unfortunately, there is one problematic point that the authors for some reason omit. Well, okay, I'll start in order.

Preparing an external HDD

Before working with a disk, be sure to transfer and save the necessary information from this disk to another medium.

I will carry out all settings using standard Windows 8.1 tools. There may be some differences from previous Windows releases, but if there are any, they are not significant.

First of all, I want to note that making an external HDD bootable is much more convenient. I divided the disk into two partitions, one contains the Windows distribution, the other partition is for my needs.

1. We connect the USB pocket and go to Disk management.

Attention! All data on the disk will be destroyed!

If you have Windows 8 installed on your PC,1 right-click: Start/Disk Management;

If Windows is earlier versions, open the Computer Management console: Start / Control Panel / Administrative Tools / Computer Management / expand Storage Devices / left click Disk Management.

See screenshot:

2. Select an external HDD drive. Be extremely careful; if you select another drive by mistake, all information will be destroyed.

In my case, this is Disk 1. As you can see in the screenshot, the disk is divided into two volumes (partitions):

3. Delete disk partitions:

4. Create new disk partitions. One for the distribution, the second will remain for your needs:

Right-click on a free disk field and select the command in the context menu Create a simple volume:

5. In the Create Simple Volume Wizard window that appears, click the button Further:

Specify the volume size as 4404 megabytes and click Next. Please note that the size is indicated in megabytes. And since 1 gigabyte is equal to 1024 megabytes, then 1024 × 4.3 = 4403.2 megabytes we get for the distribution section (mine weighs 4.18 GB, for example);

In this dialog, you need to format the new partition (FAT 32), click Further then Ready:

6. After this, you need to make the created partition active (don't forget because the computer will boot from this partition), for this:

Right click the mouse and select the command in the context menu Make the section active.

We respond to the confirmation request YES.

The external HDD looks like this:

7. We format the second partition on the disk in the same order, preferably in NTFS, but do not make it active.

Copying Windows to the active partition of an external HDD

Copying a Windows distribution to a bootable external HDD is quite simple and easy.

From boot DVD:

Open the installation DVD in Explorer, select all folders and files, and copy to the active partition of the external HDD;

From the ISO image:

By and large, an ISO image is a kind of archive. So you can open it using any archiver. You can also open the ISO image through Total Commander or Daemon Tools. Well, if you have Windows 8 or 8.1 installed on your PC, then open it with Explorer. Select all folders and files and copy them to the active partition of the external HDD;

That's it, your external HDD can act as bootable media. Just reboot and set USB HDD as boot priority in BIOS (depending on BIOS type).

• When you turn on the laptop, press F2, to ;
• Go to the tab Boot;
• IN Boot Priority order install USB HDD;
• Click F10, and then OK.

If it doesn’t work, then look at the article.

Save the changes and proceed.

As we can see from the text, preparing an external HDD for installing Windows is quite simple. And my description will not be complete if I do not talk about one problem that for some reason is rarely written about on the Internet.

Making the hard drive partition active

When I divided the hard drive into two volumes, for some reason unknown to me, not a single partition of the disk could be made active. This function was not available in the context menu.

The active partition is the partition from which the computer boots.

There are two ways to make a section active:

1. Using the Computer Management console. We have already considered this method, but, unfortunately, for a number of reasons, the Make Partition Active command may not be available. The solution to this problem is also not difficult. Remember how to prepare a bootable USB flash drive from the Command Line.
2. Using the Command Line, through the utility diskpart. The second method is a little more complicated, but more effective. You just need to do all the operations carefully and slowly.

Setting the active partition using the command line

1. Connect an external USB HDD;

2. Click Start/All Programs/Accessories/Command Prompt. Right-click and select Run as administrator.

3. In the window that opens, write the command diskpart and press the button Enter. An invitation line to work with the utility will appear – DISKPART>;

4. Enter the command list disk and press the button Enter. You will see all the disks installed on your computer;

5. We select the disk with which we will work. To do this, enter the command select disk 0, where “0” is the disk number in the list, i.e. for my external drive there will be a command select disk 1. Click the button Enter, the message Disk 1 selected will appear;

6. Next, you need to find all partitions on the selected disk. Enter the command list partition and press the button Enter.

7. We select the section we will work with. Enter the command select partition 1, where 1 is the section number in the list, i.e. for the section that we make active. Click Enter, a message will appear Section 1 selected.

8. Mark the selected partition as active, to do this, enter the command active. Click the button Enter, a message will appear DiskPart: Partition marked as active.

That's all. Good luck.

Also on the site:

How to make an external USB HDD (hard drive) bootable using standard Windows tools? updated: February 6, 2018 by: admin

One of the easiest ways to give your laptop more hard drive space or back up all your important files without burning them to a CD or DVD is to build your own external hard drive. This hard drive can be connected to any computer via a free USB port. You can easily and quickly transfer large files between computers, and also have a backup option in case something happens to your computer. This external hard drive will work on computers running Windows 2000/XP, OS X or Linux.

Steps

You must purchase an internal hard drive (now called HDD). The first step is to determine one of the standard physical sizes for any hard drive. If you already have a spare HDD for this project, skip to step 2. There are basically 3 HDD sizes: 1.8", 2.5" and 3.5. 1.8" 2.5" are standard sizes for laptop hard drives. The laptop HDD can be powered by a USB cable, so there is no need for an AC adapter. Laptop hard drives, however, are more expensive than PC internal HDDs, so if you're not concerned about size or a different power cord, a desktop HDD may be the method to go.

Select and purchase a compatible chassis. Take into account the physical size of your hard drive, as well as its interface (ATA100, ATA133, Serial ATA150, Serial ATA II, etc.). Determine the type of connection that meets the needs of all computers that will be connected. USB2.0 is a good standard now and will work on any computer or laptop with free USB access. FireWire (IEEE1394) is even faster, but it is not yet common on all computers. Be sure to also compare fan noise levels (if it has a fan and whether the noise level is displayed). For a hard drive that will be running when your computer is on, a fan is a good thing to most likely have, while hard drives used primarily for backup will usually not be needed. Also check to see if there is a power switch on 3.5" cases. Without one, you will need to unplug the adapter to turn off the drive. For backup purposes this is not a big deal, but some people using their drive for secondary storage may find this annoying. when to connect and disconnect it every time you start and shut down your computers.

Unfold your case and hard drive.

Follow the instructions on how to properly open the case.

Install the hard drive with the Master setting (or Master/No Slave, if available). This jumper is located between the Molex power connector (4 large round pins) and the ATA/SATA connector. You will see 2 rows of four or five small pins and a small clamp (jumper) connected to the 2nd one. Pull out the jumper with a tool such as tweezers or a pencil and place it in the Master position if it is not already there. The diagram of the various jumpers is usually located right on the top label of the hard drive.

Connect your Molex case's power connector and ATA/SATA ribbon cable to your HDD. While it would be very difficult to accidentally plug them in reverse, take a moment to make sure the ribbon cable and power connector are properly aligned before inserting them.

Screw the hard drive to the case. 4 or more screws were supplied with the case. There will be 4 holes, 2 on each side of the HDD, and corresponding holes inside the case.

Take one last look at the inside before closing it. Make sure you don't forget to connect anything. Read your instructions (you read them too, right? :) And make sure you cover all the steps. You'll be upset opening it over and over again because you forgot to change the jumper to Master or something.

Close the case.

Connect the power cable (if necessary) and USB or FireWire cable to the drive.

USB and FireWire are plug-and-play, meaning you don't have to turn off your computer before connecting the drive. Connect the other ends of these cables to the computer and the surge protector (you are using a surge protector, right? :).

Turn on your computer if you haven't already. Open My Computer (or Computer for Windows Vista or Windows 7). These icons are most likely located on your desktop, but can also be found in the Start menu.

You should see the new device under "Devices with Removable Storage".

Right-click on it and select Format (about halfway down the list).

Format the drive with NTFS for use on Windows (ext3 for Linux) as a file system. For reading and writing on both Linux and Windows, use FAT32. You can give it a volume label if you want. Example: External, Secondary, Backup and so on. Be sure to check that Quick Format is not selected. This will allow any bad sectors to be identified and “fenced off” from any data that will be stored in the future. .

Wait for the formatting process to complete. This may take longer for larger disks.

1. Good job! You have successfully created your own external hard drive.

   • This article can also be easily applied to the process of adding a Zip Disk, CD ROM/Burner or DVD ROM/Burner. CD/DVD ROM"s/Burners will only be supported by 5.25" enclosures. This case size is special because it also supports hard drives. The zip drive is 3.5" in size, so you'll need a panel (sometimes supplied with the case, but otherwise only costs a few dollars) to fill the void around the smaller drive and secure it to the case. The drives mentioned here are all may use different ribbon cables and power connector sizes, so make sure your case is compatible with the equipment you'll be inserting.
   • If your new drive has both USB and FireWire, use only one (the fastest one compatible with your computer(s)). If you are using USB, connect the cable to the USB High Speed ​​(2.0) connector on your computer. If you don't have a High Speed ​​connector, or use it incorrectly, then it will only mean that you will transfer data more slowly between the drive and the computer.

   Warnings

   • Never strain the ribbon cable! There should be some resistance when inserting it, but if it doesn't go in, the pins may not be lined up correctly. If you decide to bend the contacts (hopefully not too many of them), it will take time to straighten them out using a pair of pliers.
   • Hard drives are very easy to damage if dropped on a hard surface. The read/write heads can "crawl" into the platter(s) and cause physical damage to the platter, rendering that space on the drive useless, as well as making the overall device quite damaged for use.
   • Keep drive movement to a minimum while it is turned on. This once again leads to unnecessary vibrations.
   • Formatting the drive as ext3 will make it unreadable on a Windows system, and formatting it as NTFS will make it "read-only" (you can't copy files to it) on Linux systems without the appropriate software. FAT32 (called VFAT in Linux) will be read-write on both operating systems.
   • You should always use all 4 screws when adding a hard drive to any computer or case, and secure them tightly. High speed spinning of the hard drive and vibration can occur if the drive does not meet safety requirements. These vibrations can cause an annoying buzzing noise and even damage the drive over time.
   • Remember that when the hard drive is outside the case, it is not protected from static discharge. So try to keep it away from static discharge and their causes.
   • Make sure that your case does not have a hard drive power limit (no more than a certain number of gigabytes (GB)), or that this limit does not conflict with the power of your drive. Unfortunately, some older cases may have somewhat of a lower limit (say 132GB) and don't advertise it. Be careful! And if you try to use a larger HDD, format it to this limit or below, or you will most likely encounter sector read errors or something :(
   • Drivers are required when connecting an external hard drive (via USB) on Windows 98 (and 98 SE)
   • Be sure to use the "Remove Hardware" icon on the taskbar before removing the drive from the USB port. Failure to do so may result in the drive not working properly.

Very often, to “treat” the computer, to reinstall the operating system, and in many other cases, the user needs to use a boot disk. It would seem that there is nothing simpler - you can buy such a disc or borrow it from friends (in general, this is not a problem). But there are situations when the optical drive does not work, there is no bootable USB flash drive at hand, or you need to boot a netbook. The problem can be fixed if you have an external hard drive. But you need to take care of making it bootable in advance, without waiting for the moment when you need it.

Some experts recommend using special software to make the hard drive bootable. But we will take a simpler route and use standard tools of the operating system itself. We will consider all operations using Windows 8.1 as an example. However, keep in mind that the process of creating a boot disk based on an external hard drive using Windows operating systems of earlier versions is, in principle, similar (the differences are not too global). So, everything in order.

Preparing an external hard drive

Before you start working with a hard drive, you need to transfer all important information from this device to another medium. After this, it is recommended to divide the used hard drive into 2 partitions. We will use one for our personal needs, and in the second we will create a boot disk.

1. First, connect the external storage device to the computer and go to the control panel section - “Computer Management”.

Attention! Remember - all data recorded on the external hard drive will be deleted as a result of your actions!

If you are working with Windows 8.1, then right-click the manipulator and select Start/Disk Management.

As for previous versions of the system, you should use the control panel in them: Start / Control Panel / Administrative Tools / Computer Management / Storage Devices / Disk Management.

2. Now from the list presented you need to select your external hard drive from which you plan to make a boot one. Be careful when choosing a device, because all data on it will be deleted!

In our case, the external disk is disk 1, already divided into 2 partitions (volumes).

3. Delete the partitions on the disk. To do this, right-click on each partition and select “Delete volume” in the menu that opens.

Note: If your external drive only has one partition, then you just need to format that drive.

4. Create 2 partitions on the external drive - one for the boot disk, the second for various data for your own use. To do this, right-click on the free space that is displayed by the disk and select “Create a simple volume.”

5. The Volume Creation Wizard will open in front of you, in which you need to specify the size of the new volume. For us, a volume of 4404 megabytes (4.18 GB) is suitable. Click “Next”.

We designate the disk with a letter:

We need to format the new partition. Select the FAT 32 file system, click “Next” and then “Finish”.

6. Now we need to activate the created partition (this is a prerequisite and if it is not met, the computer will not be able to boot from this partition). To do this, in the context menu of the section, select the command “Make section active” and confirm by selecting the word “Yes”.

Our external drive will look like this:

7. In the same sequence, format the additional partition, choosing the NFTS file system for it. Please note that it should not be made active.

How to make an external drive bootable - the final stage

Creating a system distribution on an external hard drive after preparing the latter does not look so difficult.

Create a distribution from a bootable DVD:

To do this, open the contents of the installation DVD in Explorer and copy all the files to the activated partition created on external media.

Create a distribution from an ISO image:

What is an ISO disk image? This is nothing more than a special archive. And if this is an archive, this means that it can always be opened. Programs such as Daemon Tools or Total Commander will help you with this. If Windows 8 (8.1) is installed on your PC, then you can even open the archive using Explorer.

You need to copy all unzipped files to an external hard drive (to its active partition).

That's probably all. You now know how to make an external hard drive bootable. In order for the computer to boot from this disk, you just need to enter the BIOS and set the boot priority for the USB HDD.

Admin 06/15/2014 - 10:13 Tips

Today, the cost of USB flash drives is still quite high. And a drive with a capacity of 128 gigabytes will cost the user approximately 5,000 rubles. In comparison, a 500 GB hard drive (2.5" form factor) will cost in the range of 1500 - 2500 rubles! Naturally, the preferred purchase would be to purchase an external hard drive, or to complete it yourself...

How to assemble an external hard drive?

The benefits of self-configuring the device are obvious. This is not only an individual selection of external and technical characteristics, but also an opportunity to save money by using an existing hard drive.

So in the situation described below, we managed to get by with “little loss.” There is a 320 gigabyte hard drive, which was removed from the laptop due to replacement with a larger device. We buy an additional “box for hard drives” (case, pocket, etc.), which costs very little, from two hundred rubles and more. Next comes the assembly process, which takes 5 to 10 minutes.

If you are unsure of the success of completing the equipment yourself, then you should contact specialists. For example, ask about the possibility of assembly at the place of purchase, or trust the service center.

Steps to assemble an external hard drive:

Connecting the drive to the computer:

We connect the resulting drive to the computer using the USB cable supplied with the box. We insert one end (micro-USB) into the corresponding connector on the box panel, and one (or two) into the free USB ports of your PC;

If the hard drive used in the drive was previously installed in a laptop, as in our case, then the installation will not require any additional actions. Operating systems of the Windows family older than the XP version automatically recognize controllers of this type. If you equipped the drive with a new hard drive, then at a minimum you will need to format it (often, no additional actions are required, since the factory hard drive is ready for use after connection).

Most models of boxes for external hard drives are equipped with an indication marked as “LED” (it can display the connection - constant light, or intermittent - reading and writing information). In addition, the box panel may have additional functionality. In our case, this is the “Backup” button, designed to start a backup of the specified directories or files (with the software installed).

P.S.

That's all, it took no more than 15 minutes to start copying data to the assembled disk. I hope you were able to assemble your external hard drive, spending a minimum of time and effort.

updated: 06/25/2016

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Do-it-yourself external storage. USB drive from laptop hard drive.

Introduction. Most laptop owners sooner or later face the problem of running out of hard drive space. As a rule, laptops with screen sizes up to 15 inches inclusive do not have a free second slot for a 2.5-inch device. Therefore, owners are forced to think about either replacing the laptop itself or replacing its hard drive. After replacing the hard drive, there is always an old drive left, which can easily be turned into an external USB drive for transferring data. Naturally, you can purchase a mobile 2.5-inch hard drive and turn it into an external drive. Fortunately, the cost of external drives allows this. For example, at the time of writing, for a 250 GB mobile hard drive they are asking $40, and for a 500 GB device from WD they are asking only $45.

We decide on the type of hard drive.

To be fair, it should be noted that an ordinary desktop 3.5-inch hard drive can also be turned into an external drive - you just can’t call it mobile. If you have an unused 2.5 or 3.5 inch hard drive, then first of all you need to decide on the type of its interface.

Today on the market there are the following types of interface: IDE (ATA) and various SATA options. As a rule, all SATA interfaces are backward compatible with each other, and we will not dwell on their variations. The situation is completely different between IDE and SATA interfaces, which are absolutely incompatible with each other and have different connectors.

The picture is clickable --

The figure shows two hard drives with different interfaces. Hard drives have a mobile format of 2.5 inches. On the left is a hard drive with a SATA interface, on the right is a hard drive with an IDE interface.

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In our hands was a 250 GB hard drive from Western Digital Scorpio Blue series with a SATA interface. This drive was used in an Acer laptop for a long time, but its capacity became insufficient, and it was replaced with a more capacious 500 GB solution.

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Despite long-term use, the performance of the hard drive did not cause any complaints, so it was decided to use it as an external mobile drive. To do this, we had to find an external case for it, which is what we did. External case AGESTAR for 2.5 inch mobile hard drive. Computer hardware stores offer a wide variety of external cases for 2.5-inch hard drives. Their key difference is the following: - the material used to make the case, - the type of external port (interface), - the cost. As a rule, stores offer various cases with a USB 2.0 interface, a much smaller number of cases with an eSATA interface, and even fewer cases with a combination of USB 2.0&eSATA. Several cases with a modern USB 3.0 interface were found on sale, but their cost exceeded the cost of the hard drive itself, so we did not consider them. The key difference between USB 2.0 and eSATA interfaces is data transfer speed. Using the USB 2.0 interface allows for maximum compatibility, since these ports are available on all computers. A significant disadvantage of the USB 2.0 interface is its low data transfer speed, which will not allow you to unlock the full speed potential of your hard drive. The eSATA port is more promising, but it is not widespread and is found only in expensive versions of motherboards, cases and laptops. The eSATA interface allows you to fully unleash the potential of SATA devices. The material used can also be very different. In a simple case, it is plastic. In more expensive variations, an aluminum case with a leather cover is included. The cost of external cases also varies. The cheapest option will cost the user $3, expensive versions will cost more than $100.

Buying a $100 case for a hard drive that costs less than $40 when new and is half the price once it's in use is, to say the least, wasteful. Therefore, for testing we were provided with a case costing a symbolic 3 dollars - AgeStar SUB2P1.

Equipment and external inspection of AgeStar SUB2P1.

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We didn't expect any miracles from a device that costs three dollars, both in terms of equipment and in terms of performance. The device comes modestly packaged in a package. The front wall of the device is covered with a cardboard listing the key characteristics of the device. This includes support for 2.5-inch mobile hard drives or solid-state drives with a SATA interface, the presence of a USB 2.0 data transfer interface and various color options.

To be fair, it should be noted that our suppliers confirmed that they had not seen any other color for this case other than black.

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After opening the package, we were pleasantly surprised by the fact that the kit included an instruction manual entirely in Russian.

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The case is completely made of plastic. There are paper stickers on the front wall indicating the model, which will be erased in any case, so we recommend immediately removing them from the surface of the device.

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The material used to make the case is soft black plastic, which does not smell of anything and is uniform throughout its structure.

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The covers of the device come off in two different directions, which ensures easy removal and installation of the hard drive in an external case.

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The two sides of the outer case are secured using a plastic latch made from the material of the case. Thanks to the recesses on the walls, the lids are securely fixed and spilling any glass of liquid, or leaving the device in the rain, is unlikely to lead to any problems.

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The device is designed for SATA hard drives, which we have repeatedly emphasized. Inside there are controllers with SATA ports for power and data transfer.

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On the side wall there is a mini USB port for data transfer and power supply to the hard drive. There is no additional port to provide power to the drive, which may cause some problems for users. With a weak power supply that underestimates the voltage along the 5 volt line, you often have to deal with problems starting the hard drive. As a rule, connecting the drive directly to a port on the motherboard, and not on the system unit case, and using a high-quality USB cable allows you to forget about this problem.

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Sellers of computer components often, as an advantage of this or that external case, talk about the presence of a USB data cable in the kit or offer to purchase it separately if it is not there. We advise our users not to pay attention to this, since a mini-USB-USB cable, as a rule, is available in almost every family and is often supplied with mobile phones. In our case, we successfully used a stale data cable from a Nokia mobile phone.

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The next step was to install the hard drive into the case. This is done quite simply - by lightly pressing. The most important thing is to first correctly rotate the hard drive according to the power and SATA data ports located in the case.

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The absence of any protruding elements on the hard drive controller circuit allows you not to worry about its rear surface when transporting and using the device.

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Some users may argue that the plastic case does not provide adequate heat dissipation from the hard drive. Naturally, external cases made of aluminum cope with this task much more effectively. At the same time, we should not forget that mobile hard drives do not have such high power consumption that they suffer from overheating, and in laptops, as a rule, they are not additionally cooled with anything.

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After completing the assembly of the device, the stage of its testing and use begins. The supply of voltage to the device is accompanied by the glow of a blue LED, which also symbolizes the user about the process of data transfer. It should be noted that not everyone will have a smooth start when starting to work with the created external drive. If the hard drive has already been used, has been formatted and partitions have been created on it, you will not have any problems getting started. It works like a regular flash drive using the Plug&Play method. But those users who purchased a new hard drive without formatting and with no partitions will have a problem that will be associated with the absence of a drive letter in the “My Computer” tab.

To do this, you need to create partitions on the hard drive and format it. This can be done through various boot disks, but it’s better not to bother and do it in the Windows operating system itself.

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To do this, you need to go to the "Control Panel" through the "Start" section, then visit the "Administration" section. In this section, select “Computer Management”, where in the “Disk Management” tab you can partition and format the newly connected external drive. After creating partitions and formatting them, you will have access to them through the “My Computer” tab and you will be able to exchange with the drive as with a regular hard drive. Test configuration. The assembled external drive was tested both on a desktop computer based on a modern Core i7 processor and an equally modern motherboard, and on an Acer Aspire 7730 laptop based on a Core 2 Duo processor. It should be noted that the level of performance on two different systems turned out to be comparable.

1. Data reading speed was tested in the HD Tach 3.0.4.0 program

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It is pleasant to note that the external drive we assembled shows a much higher level of performance than the WD My Passport Essential external hard drive we previously tested. The maximum data transfer rate was 34.3 Mb/s, and the average latency was about 17.9 ms.

2. Data reading speed in HD Tune 4.5.

The picture is clickable --

In the second synthetic test, we received data similar to the previous ones, which also turned out to be slightly better than that of the official external hard drive WD My Passport Essential.

3. Write speed of 64 MB files in HD Tune 4.5.

The picture is clickable --

Testing that is closer to practice is somewhat more valuable, by recording files of 64 MB in size. In this test, we received quite expected results, which were also limited only by the capabilities of the USB 2.0 interface. Separately, I would like to note that throughout the entire testing, the temperature of the hard drive did not exceed 35 degrees Celsius, while a similar hard drive installed in the laptop had a temperature of about 43 degrees. Therefore, worrying about the operating conditions of the hard drive in this case on the part of users will be unnecessary.

4. Boot speed of the Windows 7 operating system.

During practical testing of the loading speed of the Windows 7 operating system image, we received results similar to other external drives with a USB 2.0 interface.

5. Assessing drive performance in Windows 7.

We tested the performance of the external drive we assembled using the Windows 7 operating system. To do this, in the command line you need to call the command: “winsat disk -drive g -ran -write -count 10”, where “g” is the letter of the tested drive in the system.

From the test results it is clear that the drive we assembled received a much higher rating than the factory solution WD My Passport Essential.

Conclusion. Based on the materials in this article, it is clear that any mobile hard drive can be turned into a good external drive without any hassle. Especially for testing, we asked for the cheapest external case, costing $3. Three dollars allows you to get an excellent external drive from a mobile hard drive, at least for data storage. Not to mention the fact that the same external case makes it easier to recover data from the hard drive of “dead” laptops.

Despite the fact that many people criticize AgeStar's products for their low quality, after many years of using them I have only a positive impression of them. First of all, it is at an affordable price. Defects occur in all manufacturers, although AgeStar has a slightly higher rate than Thermaltake. But the latter has no analogue to the presented external case for three dollars and with a 6-month warranty. We award AgeStar products with a gold medal of honor for their optimal performance/price ratio.

megaobzor.com

Converting a USB flash drive into a hard drive

From a Windows point of view, any flash drive can be easily turned into a natural hard drive. That is, for the operating system, the USB flash drive will be perceived as a regular, fixed disk, and not as an external portable device. Why might this be needed?

This technique is described primarily for those who want to prepare a flash drive for installing Windows 7 from Windows XP using the DISKPART utility. The whole problem is that in Windows XP the DISKPART utility does not see the flash drive at all. Entering the list disk command for DISKPART at least a hundred times is useless: as a result, we will only be shown the available hard drives and nothing more.

Therefore, it is generally impossible to make a bootable USB flash drive with Windows 7 from Windows XP using DISKPART.

However, what a blessing - this problem can be solved in a clever way. Namely: we will turn the flash drive into a regular fixed disk. In other words, for Windows XP the flash drive will become another hard drive. And then DISKPART will show the disk we need as cute. Cool? Still would!

This conversion of a flash drive will be useful to you for other purposes, wherever you decide to use a flash drive instead of a removable hard drive.

By the way, are you wondering why the hell DISKPART doesn’t display the flash drive at all? It's all about the RMB (removable media bit) descriptor recorded on each flash drive. It is because of this that Windows XP (and other versions of Windows) perceive a flash drive as a plug-in device (i.e., a removable device). It is enough to delete this descriptor and the flash drive will mutate into a hard drive and will be displayed as a disk in the My Computer window, all file managers and generally everywhere.

A wonderful driver from Hitachi will allow us to do such a trick with our ears. Therefore, first of all, we need to download it, and then modify it.

Download Hitachi driver for USB flash drive

Unpack the driver archive and find the cfadisk.inf file. Let's open it. There's a lot of stuff in the file, but we need one section, it's called .

And it has the main line with which we do street magic. In the file it looks like this:

Now all we need to do is replace the selected part of the recording with the identification data of the flash drive, which we will turn into a hard drive. And then we will change its name.

How to do it? First of all, connect the flash drive to the USB port. Now open Device Manager (for example, select Start > Run, type devmgmt.msc and press the key).

Expand the Disk devices section, right-click on the name of the flash drive and select Properties.

Go to the Details tab. The Device Instance Code menu will immediately open there; this is the code we need. Highlight the code with one left click and press the key combination to save it to the clipboard.

Well, then everything is simple. Open the cfadisk.inf file, find the section, it contains a line that starts with %Microdrive_devdesc% and change the specified value after %Microdrive_devdesc% = cfadisk_install to the one copied earlier.

In other words, you need to change the line in bold below to the one you copied. Then save the cfadisk.inf file.

%Microdrive_devdesc% = cfadisk_install,USBSTOR\DISK&VEN_JETFLASH&PROD_TS1GJF168&REV_0.00\A7B03577C3F1B5&0

Now we change the name of the flash drive. At the very end of the cfadisk.inf file, find the line Microdrive_devdesc = in the section and change the value in brackets to any other. Initially, the value “UsbToFix” is indicated there, you can leave it.

The most important thing remains: install the updated cfadisk.inf driver for our USB flash drive. To do this, click again on the name of the flash drive in the Device Manager window and select Update Driver.

The Hardware Update Wizard window will open. Now step by step.

• In the first window, select the No, not this time radio button and click the Next button.
• Select the Install from a specified location radio button and click Next.
• Select the Don't search radio button. I'll select the driver I need and click Next.

• Click the Have Disk button.
• In the Install from Disk window, click the Browse button and select the driver folder where the cfadisk.inf file is located.
• Windows will ask if you really want to install the driver, click the Continue installation button and then click Finish.

Now it's done and the flash drive has turned into a hard drive, hooray. Disconnect it, connect it again and format it. And now look: instead of a portable device icon, the flash drive will be displayed as a hard drive.

Well, that’s all, the flash drive has successfully turned into a hard drive, and now it will become available to the DISKPART utility, and maybe you will find other uses for it.

windata.ru

How to connect a hard drive to USB

Let's say you upgraded your laptop and replaced some parts with more powerful, capacious and faster ones. Everything is great, but you still have old parts that are still quite functional and it’s a shame to throw them away. Of course, you can sell them online or give them away for free. But among them there is a little thing that may still be useful, and this is a hard drive.