Convert Internal to External Hard Drive

Your article was great for as far as it went. I think you should have also addressed erasing and reformatting the HD if someone wanted to start with a fresh storage unit.

It should be mentioned that while 2.5" drive enclosures are usually powered through the USB connection itself and don't have separate transformers, they usually work more reliably either plugged into a USB port directly on the computer or into a powered USB hub (which has a separate transformer), than into an unpowered hub. Unpowered hubs, especially if other USB devices are plugged in to them, are frequently unable to provide enough power to operate a hard drive stably.

Dang.3 days too late.I would of bought an internal drive and swapped it out with my 140gb drive. Instead I just bought an external 500 gb seagate from newegg. Bad timing shame on you. :-)

I am suddenly seeing "Error Code 43" when I attempt to use my external hard drive (removed from an older computer). Searching the internet--and Microsoft's support site--indicates that it is a wide-spread Windows 7 (and maybe broader) problem, which visitors testify to having fought for >one year. Any ideas Bob? Anybody?

Bob -

You forgot to mention that the laptop should be unplugged AND the laptop battery should be removed before removing the internal hard drive. The battery can give it a shock if it wiggled while removing.
A good program to reformat the new drive is Easeus Partition Manager. First, hook up the new drive externally, then format it using Easeus Partition Manager Home. Download that and install it on the old internal drive.
After the new drive is formatted, but before installing it in the laptop, Easeus ToDo Backup can be used to clone the data on the old internal drive to the temporarily external new one. Then, when the new bigger one is installed, all of the data will be on that one in the laptop.
Easeus Partition Manager can then be used expand the partition size back to the full hard drive size (for the new internal drive). That is needed because the cloning process will temporarily make the new drive look the same size as the old one that is being cloned. The extra space is there on the new one, but invisible because the drive size info is also copied during the cloning process. That makes the size data on the new drive the same as on the old one until you use Easeus Partition Manager to expand it back to the full size of the drive (or whatever other size you want. (You can make the bigger drive look like two drives if you want by formatting the empty space as a separate partition.)
Both Easeus programs are free and available as a download many places on the internet.

I forgot - there are kits that can hookup any drive externally without a case. They have various adapters. That would make the process I described easier since the new drive would be hooked up externally first, but only temporarily.

I've been doing this for years, but without the encloser. A few years ago I bought a CO0LMAX unti that will plug into A 525" SAAT,or old IDE drive, AS WELL AS A 2.5"IDE. It came with an external power supply and usees a 2.0 USB port.I use the frame of a stripped dribe to keep it cool and off the work aria. Have a few old drives that I use to stor seldom needed, or financial records. Works great for me.

It's funny. This article came out just a couple hours after I started using my desktop hard drive as an external drive for my laptop. I didn't know that I can purchase enclosures though which got me excited when I saw it in this article. Right now I'm just using a SATA to USB cable to connect to my laptop. Works great. I can't wait to shop around for enclosures. Although I am worried about the heat building up inside it. Without the enclosure,the hard drive doesn't heat up that much.

Bob ;
How do I erase everything of the drive and how do I for matte the hard drive?

Thank you
Denis

I have upgraded my hard drives several times, but instead of reusing the old hard drive, I put them away in the event of a hard drive crash/virus/corrupted section. It is easier to copy back the old hard drive to the new one than reinstalling windows. It has saved me an enormous amount of work on a couple of occasions.

I agree about wanting to know about erasing and re-formatting - I have an old computer I could strip and am unclear about how to set it up with Acronis backup software.

This is something that I've done several times, but there's an issue that I don't quite understand: unlike drives specifically designed to be portable and USB-pluggable, internal hard drives installed in third-party enclosures can sometimes get grabbed by Windows in such a way that they won't remove without a shutdown. (I'd recommend, by the way, a utility called USBSafelyRemove that extends and enhances the Windows native device removal program, particularly because it tells you more about why a drive can't be removed right now than Windows does.)

It's important to ensure that Windows doesn't index the drive or that you know how to suspend indexing for it, but even that's not always enough to get round the occasional need to shut down before removing the drive.

I'd echo the comments about using powered/internal USB slots with drives without their own power source. Bear in mind also that a USB-2.0-connected drive will NOT be as fast as it was when it was internal: if you have the option to go to USB 3 or an external SATA port, that should increase the performance significantly. Also, 2.5" enclosures don't always work too well if they're attached to -- and powered only by -- a laptop or netbook that's running off battery power alone. (Your mileage may vary!)

I've been doing this for years using new and old drives.
In my experience, it's very important to pick a well-designed metal case, as plastic cases will fail much faster.
I've bought about 12 of these and they have never failed. There are similar cases somewhat cheaper, but reliability is critical.
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=1337267&CatId=2779
As for formatting, simply connect the drive and open disk management. Find the drive and rt-click to format, partition, initialize or whatever is required.
Hard drives are great for additional storage and backup, but they are not reliable for critical data. Always have at least two copies of such data, and consider supplementing your backup with optical or cloud backup.
All hard drives will fail, it's just a matter of when.

Years ago I bought a dingshoolie that lets me use an old IDE HD drive as an external HD.
Power transformer plugged into the 4 pin power plug, a USB adapter plugged into to where the ribbon cable goes and reboot. There's another 180 Gb's to play with, Drive W:. BUT you have to put the jumper in Cable Select or things go gaft agly.
(I use the last letter available naming drives so I don't have to juggle drive letters).
My milage varies.

Hi Bob

My last computer had 2 SATA2 hard drives and I bought a relatively inexpensive Sharkoon plug in base unit and can now access them with it.
Since then I have added a new 500 gb hard drive which is almost full with my photos. If I want to add another - which I will soon - all I need to do is by an internal hard drive and plug it in. Sharkoon now make a SATA 3 unit with SATA3 card which will be my new choice.

Hello, I have here in my hand a Maxtor DiamondMax 21, 250 GB SATA.and I have a usb to SATA/eSATA. if I connect the internal hard drive to my laptop as an external one. but the laptop doesn't react to it. Do i need to supply the hard drive with power, if yes, how?

EDITOR'S NOTE: I don't know if a USB/Sata adapter can supply power to the SATA drive. I would suggest a kit that includes an enclosure and AC power.

Guys, i have an old hdd that I pulled from a defunct desktop computer. The markings on the drive say "maxtor 3.5 series n256 40Gb". which interface should i use?

EDITOR'S NOTE: The one that fits! That drive happens to be an IDE drive, but you couldn't connect it to a SATA interface if you wanted to. Well there are IDE/SATA adapters, but that would be adding an extra layer of complexity.

How do you know i replaced my old 80 Gb hard disk , seriously i had 80 gb hdd. Replaced with 500GB and now i am gonna convert it to external then use it for backups.

Today is bad day for me lost very important data from hard disk , that's why i finally decided to convert my old HD to external and make it useful for backups ;)

I converted my PC's 250Gig internal HDD to an external HDD, but I need to acces the data that is on the disk. I have tried data recovery software without succes. Is there any way that I can recover the data on the disk?

Hi Bob
Got an old internal desktop hard drive (Win XP OS) and I'm deciding to convert to a portable ext drive. How will I go about?

Your help