Solved Remove external USB drive from casing to use as internal

Daniol71

New Member
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23
Hi,

I have question: Could I use my external hard drive (removed from it's casing obviously) and replace my internal hard drive with it?

Here's more context: I recently bought a Kingston V300 120GB SSD to replace my old HDD in my laptop and give it a boost. Performance is noticeably faster (the fresh install of Win 8.1 might have helped too) but the 120GB are filling up quite fast however.

As I was running my defrag program to check if any external drives needed defragging I was surprised to see that my 1TB USB 3.0 Toshiba Stor.E Basics showed up as an SSD along with my Kingston (and thus no need to defrag :) ). So I asked myself, could I use that drive as my internal drive instead of the Kingston?

So I googled around for a while but didn't find anything. My questions are:

- Will it work?

- If yes, does it need to be configured in any way first?

- Would there be compatibility issues? My laptop is SATA 2 and I guess the drive in the Toshiba would be SATA 3.

- Would read/write speeds maybe be too slow to run the computer properly?

I've always received great help here, so I thank you guys in advance :)

Daniel
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8.1 (64-bit)
    Computer type
    Laptop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Acer Aspire V3-772g
If its a SATA drive it should work. SATA 3 is backwards compatible to SATA 2. As far as I know a SATA 3 drive will work on a SATA 2 motherboard connector, it just runs at the SATA 2 speed. However I would be surprised if the external drive was an SSD drive. Do you have the make and model number? If it is an SSD drive it would have been fairly expensive, how much did you pay for it? I have an ASUS K75DE, it has a 17.3 inch screen and dual drive bays. I did a quick google of your laptop and it appears to also have a 17.3 inch screen. If you have dual drive bays you could install the original drive as a storage drive and move your user folders to it to gain extra space. I have a 128 GB SSD for OS and a 256 GB SSD for Data in my K75DE.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 10 Education 64 Bit
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Asus
    CPU
    AMD Phenom II X4 980 Black Edition Deneb 3.7GHz
    Motherboard
    ASUS M4N68T-M V2 µATX Motherboard
    Memory
    8GB 4GBx2 Kingston PC10600 DDR3 1333 Memory
    Graphics Card(s)
    NVIDIA Geforce GT640 2 Gig DDR3 PCIe
    Sound Card
    VIA VT1708s High Definition Audio 8-channel Onboard
    Monitor(s) Displays
    22" LG E2242 1080p and 2 19" I-INC AG191D
    Screen Resolution
    1280x1024 - 1920x1080 - 1280x1024
    Hard Drives
    Crucial MX100 256 GB SSD and 500 GB WD Blue SATA
    PSU
    Thermaltake TR 620
    Case
    Power Up Black ATX Mid-Tower Case
    Cooling
    Stock heatsink fan
    Keyboard
    Logitech Wireless K350 Wave
    Mouse
    Logitech M570 Trackball and T650 TouchPad
    Internet Speed
    80 Mbps Down 30 Mbps Up
    Browser
    Internet Explorer 11
    Antivirus
    Windows Defender
    Other Info
    HP DVD1040e Lightscribe - External USB2
I know, I'm probably wrong, I don't think the external drive was that expensive (around 40-60 pounds) but I don't know, it was a gift. Just strange how one of my programs treats it like an SSD. Might be some sort of software on the external hard drive itself that does that.

Yes my laptop does have a 17.3 inch screen, but sadly it's quite old (around five years now) and was quite cheap so no it doesn't have dual drive bays, it doesn't even have a GPU. If you open it up there's actually a big "gap" where they'd put the GPU on the more expensive models.

About the drive itself the model is HDTB110EK3BA (the HD probably stands for Hard Disk or something) and it does make kind of a "spinning sound" when it runs so I guess that points toward it being a HDD. There are no reports of it on the internet being a SSD.
Max interface transfer rate (with USB 3.0) is supposed to be around 5Gbps (according to Toshiba) while eBay says it has a 5400 RPM HDD with a max external data transfer rate of 640Mbps.

Too bad :/ Will have to wait until SSD prices drop!

Thanks anyway :)
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8.1 (64-bit)
    Computer type
    Laptop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Acer Aspire V3-772g
Usually if it was an SSD they would be keen to advertise that fact and it would up the price. To open it up and confirm it one way or the other would likely break the enclosure. Its actually more than likely a low power 5400 RPM drive which is slower than your usual 7200 RPM desktop drive. If it was me I'd leave it as is and us it as it was intended. I think you'll find that more often than not when they advertise a device they are keen to quote the theoretical maximum speed of the interface used. They like to use the "could be up to" a lot. The interface may be USB 3 or USB 2 but the true speed of the drive in the enclosure can't even get close to that. Such is life and advertising. ;)
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 10 Education 64 Bit
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Asus
    CPU
    AMD Phenom II X4 980 Black Edition Deneb 3.7GHz
    Motherboard
    ASUS M4N68T-M V2 µATX Motherboard
    Memory
    8GB 4GBx2 Kingston PC10600 DDR3 1333 Memory
    Graphics Card(s)
    NVIDIA Geforce GT640 2 Gig DDR3 PCIe
    Sound Card
    VIA VT1708s High Definition Audio 8-channel Onboard
    Monitor(s) Displays
    22" LG E2242 1080p and 2 19" I-INC AG191D
    Screen Resolution
    1280x1024 - 1920x1080 - 1280x1024
    Hard Drives
    Crucial MX100 256 GB SSD and 500 GB WD Blue SATA
    PSU
    Thermaltake TR 620
    Case
    Power Up Black ATX Mid-Tower Case
    Cooling
    Stock heatsink fan
    Keyboard
    Logitech Wireless K350 Wave
    Mouse
    Logitech M570 Trackball and T650 TouchPad
    Internet Speed
    80 Mbps Down 30 Mbps Up
    Browser
    Internet Explorer 11
    Antivirus
    Windows Defender
    Other Info
    HP DVD1040e Lightscribe - External USB2
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