Introduction.
Most laptop owners sooner or later face the problem of lack of space on. As a rule, laptops up to and including 15 inches 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, it always remains old drive, which can be easily converted into external USB data storage drive.
Naturally, you can purchase a mobile 2.5 inch HDD and turn it into an external drive. Fortunately, the cost of external drives allows this. For example, at the time of writing, a 250 GB mobile hard drive costs $40, while a 500 GB device from WD costs only $45.
Decide on the type of hard drive.
In fairness, 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 anymore. If you have an unused 2.5 or 3.5 inch hard drive, then first of all you need to determine the type of its interface.
To date, the following interface types exist on the market: 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.
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The figure shows two hard drives with different interfaces. Winchesters have mobile format 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 SATA interface. This drive been used for a long time in Acer laptop, but its capacity was not enough, and it was replaced by a more capacious 500 GB solution.
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Despite long-term use, the hard drive did not cause any complaints, so it was decided to use it as an external mobile drive. To do this, it was necessary to find an external case for him, which 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 this:
- body material,
- type of external port (interface),
- cost.
As a rule, various cases are presented in stores with USB interface 2.0, there are much fewer cases with eSATA interface, even fewer cases with their combination of USB 2.0 & eSATA. Several cases were found on sale with modern interface USB 3.0, 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 is the transfer speed. Using the USB 2.0 interface allows for maximum compatibility, as these ports are available on all computers. A significant disadvantage of the USB 2.0 interface is - low speed data transfer, 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 common and is found only in expensive versions of motherboards, cases and laptops. The eSATA interface allows you to fully unlock the potential of SATA devices.
The material of manufacture can also be very different. AT simple case, is plastic. In more expensive variations, an aluminum case with leather case included.
The cost of external cases also varies. Most cheap option will cost the user 3 dollars, expensive versions will cost more than 100 dollars.
Purchasing 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 wasteful to say the least. Therefore, for testing, we were given a case worth a symbolic 3 dollars - AgeStar SUB2P1. Completion and external inspection AgeStar SUB2P1.
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From a device worth three dollars, we did not expect any miracles, 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 by a cardboard box listing the key characteristics of the device. This is support for 2.5 inch mobile hard drives or solid state drives with SATA interface, the presence of a transfer interface USB data 2.0 and various color options.
In fairness, it should be noted that our suppliers have confirmed that they have not seen any other than the black color of this case.
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After opening the package, we were pleasantly surprised by the fact that the set includes an instruction manual completely 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 that you immediately remove them from the surface of the device.
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The material of the case is soft black plastic, which does not smell anything, is uniform throughout its structure.
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The covers of the device come off in two different sides, which provides easy removal and installation of the hard drive in an external case.
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The two sides of the outer case are fixed with a plastic latch made from the material of the case. Thanks to the recesses on the walls, the lids are securely fixed and spilling a glass of liquid, or leaving the device in the rain, is unlikely to lead to any problems.
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The device is intended for SATA hard drives which we have repeatedly emphasized. Inside soldered controllers with SATA ports for power and data transfer.
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Mini is soldered on the side wall USB port to transfer data and power 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 lowers 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 the port on the motherboard, and not on the case system block, the use of quality USB cable allows you to forget about this problem.
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Sellers of computer components often talk about the presence of a USB data cable in the kit as an advantage of one or another external case or offer to purchase it separately if it is not. We advise our users not to pay attention to this, as a mini-USB-to-USB cable is usually found in almost every family and is often supplied with mobile phones. In our case, we successfully applied a stale data cable from mobile phone Nokia.
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The next step is to install the hard drive in the case. This is done quite simply - by light pressing. Most importantly, first rotate the hard drive correctly according to the SATA power and 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 efficiently. At the same time, we should not forget that mobile hard drives do not have such a high power consumption to suffer from overheating, and in laptops, as a rule, they are not cooled by anything else.
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After the assembly of the device is completed, the stage of its testing and use begins. The power supply to the device is accompanied by the glow of the blue LED, which also symbolizes the user about the data transfer process. It should be noted that not everyone will have a smooth start with the created external drive. If the hard drive has already been used, it has been formatted and partitions have been created on it, you will not have problems getting started. He decides how regular flash drive Plug&Play method. But for those users who have purchased a new hard drive without formatting and with no partitions, there will be 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 yourself operating system Windows.
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To do this, you need to go to the "Control Panel" through the "Start" section, then visit the "Administrative Tools" section. AT this section select "Computer Management", where in the "Disk Management" tab you can partition and format the newly connected external drive. After creating partitions, 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 as desktop computer, on the base modern processor Core i7 and no less modern motherboard as well as on a laptop Acer Aspire 7730 based processor Core 2 duos. It should be noted that the level of performance on two various systems turned out to be comparable.
1. Data reading speed was tested in HD Tach 3.0.4.0
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It's nice 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 tested earlier. Max speed data transfer was 34.3 Mb / s, and the average delay was about 17.9 ms.
2. Data reading speed in HD Tune 4.5.
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In the second synthetic test, we got similar data to the previous ones, which also turned out to be slightly better than that of the official WD My Passport Essential external hard drive.
3. The speed of writing files of 64 MB in HD Tune 4.5.
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Somewhat more valuable is testing close to practice, by writing 64 MB files. In this test, we got quite expected results, which were also limited only by the capabilities of the USB 2.0 interface.
Separately, I would like to note that during the entire testing, the temperature of the hard drive did not exceed 35 degrees Celsius, while a similar hard drive installed in a laptop had a temperature of about 43 degrees. Therefore, users will not need to worry about the working conditions of the hard drive in this case.
4. Operating download speed Windows systems 7.
In the course of practical testing on the boot speed of the Windows 7 operating system image, we received results similar to other external drives with a USB 2.0 interface.
5. Evaluation of drive performance in Windows environment 7.
We tested the performance of the external drive we assembled using the Windows 7 operating system. To do this, in command line you need to call the command: "winsat disk -drive g -ran -write -count 10", where "g" is the letter of the drive under test in the system.
From the test results, it can be seen that the drive we assembled received a much higher rating than the factory WD My Passport Essential solution. 
Conclusion.
According to the materials of 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 to provide us with the cheapest external case, worth $ 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 facilitates the recovery of data from the hard drive of "dead" laptops.
Despite the fact that AgeStar products are criticized by many for their low quality, after many years of using it, I have only a positive impression of it. First of all, it is for a democratic cost. Marriage occurs in all manufacturers, even if AgeStar has a slightly higher figure than Thermaltake. But the latter has no analogue to the presented external case for three dollars and with a guarantee of 6 months. We award AgeStar products with a gold medal for the best performance/price ratio.
If you have an unnecessary, old, or maybe non-working hard drive lying around at home and, in addition, you like to do interesting nonsense, then you are at the right place. Today we will consider one more, besides the main, use of the hard drive. There is nothing sensible and useful in this, but I hope you will be interested.
What do we do with an old hard drive?
The hard drive rotates at a breakneck speed during operation. Process work hard disk can be found in the article What do you think will happen if the disk is spun up to breakneck speed and allowed to walk around the world? This is exactly what our old hard drive will do. The following describes the process that precedes this fun.
Preparing an old hard drive
To prepare an old hard drive for this event, you need to remove its cover and remove the hard drive head, which is used to read information. If everything is done correctly, then the hard drive should look like this:
As you can see, pull yourself magnetic disk no longer a problem. This is exactly the result we need to achieve: the magnetic disk should easily get off its mink, but this does not need to be done yet. When the time comes, he will get out of there himself.
What do we do next?
After that, we need to connect power to our old hard drive. This should be done from the computer's power supply. If you connect power to the hard drive and supply electricity to the power supply, then our drive will start spinning. This is what we are striving for. Now slowly lower the hard drive to the floor and begin to gently tilt it so that the open side approaches the floor. Somewhere in a perpendicular position (plus or minus a few degrees), the disk will be able to fly off its hole. You can help him with this. Here, make sure that the direction of rotation of the disk does not coincide with your location. As soon as the disk flies off, it will rush out of sight across the floor.
The principle is clear. It's like toy cars that need to be charged in reverse to get them to go far enough. It's the same here: we charge our disk with kinetic energy and lower it to the floor. Only unlike a toy car, here you need to be a little careful. Since some hard drives can spin up to 15,000 rpm, then in front of you is something like a trimming wheel. Therefore, you do not need to put fragile items or close friends along the way. old hard disk.
But don't worry too much about security. The untwisted disc runs perfectly straight, so you can choose the trajectory for it yourself and not be afraid that it will turn the wrong way. We did not observe any destructive actions in relation to the floor and the wall (the only thing that in my case was not afraid to face the disk).
This is how you can make a new toy from an old hard drive.
Hi all! Actually the idea is not new. They say the Internet is full of such records, I have not seen it yet, the idea appeared by itself. It itched me here, you know, to urgently sharpen a knife and a screwdriver ... But “OH GOD!” Emery in the garage, but at work there’s not even a file ... Well, we are “system administrators” simple people and I got into the “bins of the Motherland” and got it ... An old hard drive from a PC ...
We take scissors, screwdrivers, sandpaper, our HDD and double-sided tape
Everything we need.
We unscrew the bolts. 7 bolts are always hidden under the sticker.
……………………………………………………………….
We open. and it's all beautifully packaged. glitters.
We unscrew the drive of the heads and the lever for moving the heads, Magnets for experiments, the rest can be scrapped.
We unscrew the disk mounting cover and remove the washer above the disk, as well as the disk itself
We put the disk on the sandpaper, trace the contours and cut out
Get these bagels)
We glue double-sided tape on our disk (you can also attach it to the glue, but it will be easier to replace the sandpaper on the tape)
……………………………………………………………………………………
Iskrim))))
Well, about the work of this device.
It is better to take sandpaper with a fine fraction, on a large engine it is rather weak. But I had enough for sharpening everything I needed, even very much. Bye everyone!
Read why you shouldn't rush to throw away your old hard drive. How to secure the data stored on such a disk, if the disk can still be recovered. The development of electronic technologies does not stand still, and the development of new computer devices and their components takes the first place here. Stationary personal computers, laptops, netbooks, smartphones, tablets, ultrabooks - these are far from full list devices that we use, and it is steadily growing and expanding. The most widely used personal computers are used both for solving production or office tasks, and for personal use.
The essence of the problem
The main advantage of computers is their high data processing speed, improved performance compared to other devices, as well as the ability to store and instantly process a huge amount of data. Not the least role in reaching the peak of popularity of personal computers is played by internal devices for storing user information - hard drives HDD.
The use of modern materials and technologies makes it possible to create high-capacity hard disks at a fairly low final cost. You will no longer surprise anyone with a hard drive with a capacity of "10 TB", "12 TB" and even "16 TB".
Relatively recently, solid-state drives have become widely used. SSD. Made using chip-based technology, drives SSD use flash memory to store information. Thanks to this approach, solid state drives have smaller size, weight and much more high speed loading and processing information, compared to standard hard drives. However, they are inferior to the latter due to several times more high price and much less wear resistance.
No wonder users decide to replace outdated versions hard drives new storage devices, more modern and faster.
However, no matter how attractive hard disk to store basic user data, there are objective reasons to use other information storages. A large number of external drives are available today and USB flash drives. Additionally, due to the ability to access from anywhere, a variety of cloud storage data on the Internet.
One of the important reasons for replacing an old hard drive with a new one is the high probability of the latter failing. Very often, drive average uptime HDD is five to six years. And when the disk's life comes to an end, a series of signs appear to signal this. We described in more detail about the possible signs of failure of your hard drive in our earlier article: "Five signs your hard drive is nearing the end of its life, and what to do about it now?" .
Or your hard drive has already become unusable, and you are determined to throw it away as unnecessary. But do not rush to make hasty decisions. And in this case, your disk is still of some value, even if you checked it and it is not possible to recover information from it. Read our article on the possible use of old drives in any condition.
The drive still works great!
Not every hard drive is bad just because it's old. As we wrote above, there are various reasons for replacing a hard drive, one of which is insufficient disk capacity. You can continue to use the old hard drive with the new one by reinstalling to new disk operating system, and transferring all important data to it. Your old disk can still serve you for a long time. And if you don't plan to use it for storage important information or backing up your data, then you have nothing to fear.
By the way, you need to make sure that you do not find obvious signs hard disk. You may need to run some disk maintenance tools that can predict and prevent potentially possible failure hard drive.
As long as the old hard drive works well, there is no reason for you to get rid of it!
Your disk may not be completely corrupted!
So, you think your old hard drive is completely dead after a crash? If you have data stored on such a drive and want to recover it, then you should run a full drive diagnostic and see if it's possible to fix it before completely getting rid of it. Maybe the situation is not critical and you will be able to recover the data. If your hard drive shows certain signs of life, then try to immediately create backup your data. The right move is always to carry out backup data, regardless of the condition and age of the hard drive. Then you can be sure of the safety of your information. If the hard drive just didn't boot the operating system installed on it, but otherwise works fine, you can probably copy the data using relatively simple methods. For example, using "Linux Live CD/USB", which helps restore the data and health of the main operating system after a failure.
If you have reason to suspect that your hard drive has bad sectors and corrupted data, then you can try using a professional tool such as Hetman Partition Recovery, to recover your data.
The disk can still be useful!
Are you sure you don't want to use your old hard drive anymore? If it still works fine, there are many different and useful ways to use it for its intended purpose.
There are various options for using your old drive. For example, consider setting "RAID systems". "RAID" is a low cost redundant drive array that allows you to use a spare hard drive to mirror data from another drive.
Alternatively, you can set up a second operating system on it and share it on one personal computer. An old hard drive gives you the opportunity to work on a different operating system without compromising your primary hard drive.
Or turn it into your own media center. This is far from a complete list. options using an old working hard drive. Depending on your needs, you can independently decide on the further purpose of your disk.
The disk contains personal information!
You can simply sell or donate (donate) your old disk if you don't need it. It may not bother you, but you should be aware that your old drive contains a variety of personal information. And even if you do not plan to look for it there, then someone else can do it. Some attackers may search for your stored information in order to use it for their own selfish purposes. You have formatted your old hard drive and are sure that your stored data cannot be accessed. But, this is not the case, your data is still on the disk, and can be restored back with special software.
You must understand that this is the nature of the work file system Windows. When deleting a file or formatting a disk, the system does not actually delete information, but marks given place as free for further recording and use! The only way to make sure that attackers can't recover your personal files is to overwrite them many times.
If the realization that someone can access your files makes you nervous and worried, then you will need to explore ways to completely clear the memory of your hard drive in order to permanently delete sensitive data. However, such methods are not a 100% guarantee of protecting your personal data from recovery and access to them by third parties.
If software can no longer access your hard drive, you can always physically destroy it to prevent any data recovery.
The disk must be recycled!
If your old hard drive is no longer functioning and cannot be used for other purposes, then it definitely needs to be recycled!
Electronics contains different kinds precious materials, the extraction of which was spent great amount energy, possibly contaminated territory and caused significant damage to the environment. If you refuse to process and extract from electronic devices such materials, their extraction every year will increase environmental, social and economic damage.
To date, security environment and recycling of materials comes out, in importance, in the first place. Therefore, it becomes unreasonable to scatter expensive materials. You can also contribute to the conservation of natural resources by reducing their consumption and reducing the amount of waste you create. The last statement means that you should take care of recycling your faulty hard disk.
Conclusion: Old and broken hard drives are not automatically useless.
Whether your old hard drive is still working or not, it represents a certain amount of value. You can still recover your data from it, use it for your own use, sell or donate your drive, or a recycling company may extract rare metals from it. Either way, an old hard drive can be useful. And the worst thing you can do with your drive is smash it and just throw it in a landfill.
What did you do with your old hard drive? Or maybe you have other ways to use it? Please share your ideas and tips with us in the comments to expand your use cases for these discs.
And just for those who like to look at the site in search of interesting and useful things. As usual in our time, old things are disposed of most in the usual way, this is a dump to landfills, but sometimes it happens that from an object that has failed or lost its basic qualities, you can collect something useful, in other words, give a second life. In this homemade product, the author shares with us the idea of creating a vacuum cleaner from a hard drive, which is not able to work as a drive due to its long service life.
In order to assemble a vacuum cleaner with our own hands, we need:
* A hard drive from a computer that is not capable of functioning properly as a storage device or is simply unnecessary.
*Plastic band.
*Glue "second".
*Hacksaw blade for metal.
* Thick cardboard or thin plywood of your choice.
*Insulating tape.
* Thermal gun.
*Filter, which can serve as an unnecessary stocking, pantyhose or sock.
After all the components are available, you can begin to manufacture a vacuum cleaner.
The first step is to disassemble the hard drive and free it from unnecessary parts that we do not need,
be careful when disassembling, as many elements are glued with strong glue and you can get hurt when torn off.
When only the engine and the disk itself remain in our hard drive, we proceed to gluing the blades, which in finished form will look like an impeller. With glue "second" should also be shown caution, since the time of its drying is an instant.
After that, we need to make a hole in the cover for air supply and its exit from the system, we do this with a metal file.
Now you need to make an air duct out of thick cardboard, as the author did.
We heat the gun with hot glue and glue the air duct to the cover of our disk, for convenience we glue it at an angle.
The place on the reverse side where the air will come out must have a filter, or garbage will fly out, for this you can use a stocking or a sock.
In order to complete the homemade work, it is necessary to fix our filter with electrical tape and connect the computer's power supply, if it is used separately, then it is necessary to close the green wire with the black one, which imitates the power button on the computer.