Booting through "SATA to USB 3.0 Converter"

Dreadnought · May 19, 2019

So my laptop only has a 500GB HDD, I just bought an SSD (250GB 860 Evo) for $30 on a sale. My plan is to set the SSD as the primary boot drive. Is it possible to set the SSD as the primary boot drive through a converter? Will the speed just as the same as if I connected it straight to my laptop's SATA port? It's just a standard $10 SATA to USB 3.0 coverter.

Hiya! · May 19, 2019

You better off using the hdd if you do that. It will be very slow using USB as a boot drive.

If your laptop has a DVD drive you can buy a sata caddy that utilize the DVD room so you can use both of your drive.

Dreadnought · May 19, 2019

2 minutes ago, Hiya! said:

You better off using the hdd if you do that. It will be very slow using USB as a boot drive.

If your laptop has a DVD drive you can buy a sata caddy that utilize the DVD room so you can use both of your drive.

Yes fortunately my laptop has a DVD drive, will I be able to utilize the full speed of 860 Evo if I use the sata caddy?

Kisai · May 20, 2019

On 5/19/2019 at 3:09 AM, Dreadnought said:

Yes fortunately my laptop has a DVD drive, will I be able to utilize the full speed of 860 Evo if I use the sata caddy?

If you have an adapter for the DVD connector, yes. But the Laptop needs to support that configuration. It's possible that the laptop might not boot from a second drive without tinkering with settings in the BIOS.

You can make the USB3 drive bootable, but it will only operate at USB2.0 speeds until it gets into Windows and the USB3.0 driver is loaded. I don't really recommend either option. If you want to permanently use a drive with a machine, remove the existing drive and replace it. Like I'd install a new drive, install Windows on it, and then plug the old drive into the USB3 chassis.