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Turning an External HDD into Internal

Scarfold
By Scarfold
in Storage Devices
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Posted
Just now, batatas said:

Yes it is possible after all a external HDD is just a regular HDD in a enclosure.

But depends sometimes, some smaller one's are made abit differently? (May be wrong, but I got one that seems smaller).

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Posted
Just now, OLS said:

But depends sometimes, some smaller one's are made abit differently? (May be wrong, but I got one that seems smaller).

Well depends there are 2.5 HDD and the regular 3.5 ones that we use in desktop pcs normally, the 2.5 is the size of a normal ssd, but it is possible to make them even smaller if you use a pci ssd and make it into an external drive.

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Posted

You can! It's really easy, usually. :) Just open the shell and pull out the drive. :D

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Posted

it depends, I know the USB 3.0 2.5" 1tb WD externals we have use a proprietary connection when opened up, realistically you have to open it and see what the connections are like.

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Posted

Long time ago, it's possible. Now it's almost impossible. They either have the USB directly soldered to the HDD or the HDD uses some encryption where it will only work with the controller it came with.

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Posted
1 hour ago, Scarfold said:

Is it possible, and if so how safe is it?

Depends on the drive.  I Had external 4gb drive that when I took it out of the enclosure and plugged it into my PC only showed up as a 2.5gb HDD, but If I connected it back to the enclosure it would show as 4gb again.

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Posted
1 hour ago, Xanthe_2871 said:

You can! It's really easy, usually. :) Just open the shell and pull out the drive. :D

It's not always easy to open up external hard drives.

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19 hours ago, Ryoku said:

Depends on the drive.  I Had external 4gb drive that when I took it out of the enclosure and plugged it into my PC only showed up as a 2.5gb HDD, but If I connected it back to the enclosure it would show as 4gb again.

That's some small ass HDD.

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Posted
4 hours ago, NumLock21 said:

That's some small ass HDD.

sorry meant tb not gb.

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Posted

Let me answer this correctly and dispel the information above. 

 

The answer is "most likely." The VERY large majority of external drives are simply SATA drives with a (sometimes proprietary) usb to SATA interface. 

 

If the drive has SATA power and data ports, then yes, you can make it work.

 

However, there are caveats. Some drives (most notably the WD my book drives) have a "proprietary encryption" that makes the data on the drive unreadable when you pull it out of the enclosure. HOWEVER, a simple reformat will make the drive work internally with your computer. You'll have to go into disk management on windows to reformat the drive. It's not hard. Just make sure you back up the data elsewhere, (because you will lose all of the data on the drive.) then reformat the drive. 

 

It's completely safe, so long as you back up your data elsewhere before hand. If it's a non WD drive, then just try taking it out of the enclosure and putting it in your computer. It may work right away. You can always put it back IN the enclosure to back up the data...

 

EDIT: Let me rephrase a bit of what I said above about WD. Not ALL of their drives have this hardware based proprietary encryption, but the majority (or all, I do not know for sure) of their 3.5" external drives do. As far as I know, their "My Book" is their only external 3.5" drive enclosure, and as far as I know, all of their "My Book" drives use hardware encryption. (Both of my "My Books" had it.)

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Posted
On 11/16/2016 at 4:09 PM, Godlygamer23 said:

It's not always easy to open up external hard drives.

I'll agree with this. I scavenged an enclosure form e-waste to try to pull out the drive to see if it still worked, but it was this ridiculous enclosure that was GLUED shut. You had to cut it open to get the drive out. It was very stupid.

 

The WD My Books though are pretty easy to take apart. Just a few snaps (that you'll probably break if you take it apart) hold it together. 

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Posted
On 16.11.2016 г. at 11:44 PM, Scarfold said:

~snip~

Hi there :)

 

What's the drive's brand and model? 

Generally, as the guys pointed out, you may be able to do that as there is a regular HDD inside the enclosure. 

Mind that some external drives feature hardware encryption which prevents the data on the drive to be read outside the enclosure and you may need to reformat it.

Other drives feature soldered USB connectors on the drive itself so you can't really connect them to a SATA port. 

Usually, removing the drive from its enclosure voids the warranty on the drive and the enclosure so I'd check that too.

 

Captain_WD. 

If this helped you, like and choose it as best answer - you might help someone else with the same issue. ^_^
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