Using external HDD as internal ?

nayas · July 22, 2019

Ran out of SATA ports, should i hook external WD 1 tb drive to a USB 3 port and use it as internal, besides it being a little bit slow (5400 rpm) are any other downsides ?

Calamity1911 · July 22, 2019

6 minutes ago, nayas said:

Ran out of SATA ports, should i hook external WD 1 tb drive to a USB 3 port and use it as internal, besides it being a little bit slow (5400 rpm) are any other downsides ?

I actually did that for awhile with my 860 Evo.
While I was using it like that, it worked fine. Even ran at full speed, too.

Just keep in mind, USB 3's speed max is around 5Gb/s where SATA III is around 6Gb/s. With a mechanical hard drive, you probably would barely notice because they run slower than the max speed of both USB 3 and SATA III.

But yes, it is doable.

Boomwebsearch · July 24, 2019

On 7/21/2019 at 11:16 PM, Calamity1911 said:

you probably would barely notice because they run slower than the max speed of both USB 3 and SATA III.

But yes, it is doable.

Yes, you can use an external hard drive as for the same purpose of an internal hard drive. Although, keep in mind that it could make your system more unresponsive and could cause certain programs to not run properly. Just be careful not to get the drive accidentally unplugged while it is running since that is more likely to happen if it's not inside of your computer case.