Storage is cheap nowadays, but external hard drives still command a premium over their internal counterparts. By repurposing an old hard drive as an external drive, or simply buying an enclosure and installing your own hard disk, you can save some money on your external storage solution.
1. You are out of internal bays on your computer. This is especially a concern with laptops which may not have any empty bays to begin with.
2. You have an old hard drive that uses a different interface than your new computer. If you recently upgraded to a SATA computer you may have old ATA hard drives salvaged from your last computer that are still large enough to be useful, but can't be installed in your new computer's internal bays.
3. You want to share the hard drive amongst multiple computers. You may even network it so several machines can access it simultaneously. This especially makes sense if you are going to be storing work projects on the drive, or music and video media which would be inconvenient to copy to several machines.
1. SCSI (Small Computer System Interface): An older parallel technology that has largely been eclipsed by the newer interfaces, so if you are shopping for a new drive you can find competing technologies for cheaper and in larger capacities. However, the later versions of SCSI are very fast, even faster than the current standard, SATA, and have more than enough bandwidth to saturate a USB or Firewire connection. So if you have an old SCSI drive lying around it may be worth it to give it a new life as an external drive.
2. ATA/IDE (Advanced Technology Attachment/Internal Drive Electronics): An older standard that was in use for a long time, so there are a lot of hard drives still floating around out there. Its successor, SATA, is available in larger capacities and is usually cheaper, but if you already have an ATA drive you might as well put it to good use.
3. SATA (Serial Advanced Technology Attachment): This faster, serial replacement for the ATA interface is the most common storage interface found in modern computers. It also has the added bonus of having smaller, more convenient cables than ATA, so SATA drives tend to be easy to install.
4. SAS (Serial Attached Small Computer System Interface): SAS is the serial successor to SCSI, offering extremely fast bandwidth. In fact, it's so fast and so much more expensive than the alternatives that it's probably a waste to use it in an external drive, at least until USB 3.0 or other external interfaces become available that can take advantage of its 150 or 300 megabytes per second of bandwidth.
Hard drives come in four typical form factors:
1. 5.25" - Usually only used for optical drives.
2. 3.5" - The standard size for desktop drives.
3. 2.5" - The standard size for laptop drives.
4. 1.8" - An ultracompact drive for netbooks or digital media players.
Strictly speaking, there's nothing wrong with putting a smaller hard drive in an enclosure designed for a larger form factor: the drive might rattle around in the enclosure a little bit if you don't secure it in place, but as long as you have the correct cable to plug into the drive everything should work fine. Of course, it's physically impossible to stuff a larger hard drive into a smaller enclosure, so make sure you don't err on the small side.
1. USB 1.0 (Universal Serial Bus) The old USB spec is limited to 1.5 MB/s and is not very useful for disk intensive operations or large files, but if you are using an older computer or working with smaller files it will get the job done, albeit slowly.
2. USB 2.0 The most common interface port on modern computers clocks in at up to 60 MB/s. This should be sufficient for all but the most intensive storage applications.
3. FireWire 400/800 FireWire controllers are currently available in two versions, 400 and 800. The version number refers to the approximate bandwidth in megabits, which translates into connection speeds of 49 MB/s and 98 MB/s, respectively. Like USB 2.0, these speeds should be sufficient for almost any normal data usage.
4. Ethernet Pretty much every computer in the world has an Ethernet port. Depending on your computer network controller, it may operate at 10, 100, 1,000 or even 10,000 megabits per second (although the 10 gigabit controllers are currently very expensive). This translates into speeds of 1.16 MB/s, 11.6 MB/s, 116 MB/s or 1,160 MB/s. Aside from its ubiquity, another advantage of an Ethernet enclosure is that you can plug the hard drive into a router and access it from any computer on your network. Enclosures with Ethernet ports may also be referred to as NAS, or Network Attached Storage, devices.
5. WiFi Some network enclosures cut out the middle man and combine a hard drive with a wireless router, allowing you to plug a hard drive into the device and then access it wirelessly.
6. eSATA (external Serial Advanced Technology Attachment) eSATA is an external connection designed specifically for SATA hard drives. A SATA hard drive typically has to convert its data signal to either USB, Firewire or Ethernet data specifications, resulting in some inefficiency. An eSATA connection means the hard drive does not need to convert the data before sending it to the computer or device requesting it, which results in a more efficient drive that uses less power and has generally faster seek times. However, eSATA ports are more rare than either USB or Firewire and are usually only found on DVRs or other digital media devices.
If you have multiple hard drives lying around and you don't want to buy an enclosure for all of them, look for an enclosure that is easy to disassemble, or even a "dock-style" enclosure where the hard drive is plugged in like a big cartridge.
Step One: Do you really need an external drive?
Since we have already mentioned the fact that internal hard drives are less expensive, this naturally begs the question: why not just install an internal hard drive? There are several scenarios when an external hard drive makes more sense:1. You are out of internal bays on your computer. This is especially a concern with laptops which may not have any empty bays to begin with.
2. You have an old hard drive that uses a different interface than your new computer. If you recently upgraded to a SATA computer you may have old ATA hard drives salvaged from your last computer that are still large enough to be useful, but can't be installed in your new computer's internal bays.
3. You want to share the hard drive amongst multiple computers. You may even network it so several machines can access it simultaneously. This especially makes sense if you are going to be storing work projects on the drive, or music and video media which would be inconvenient to copy to several machines.
Step Two: Identify the hard drive interface and form factor
If you already have an internal hard drive you intend to convert to an external hard drive, be sure to identify the type of interface it uses so that you can purchase the correct enclosure for it. If you are going to buy a new hard drive and enclosure at the same time, you can afford to shop around. What follows is a description of the most common hard drive internal interfaces:1. SCSI (Small Computer System Interface): An older parallel technology that has largely been eclipsed by the newer interfaces, so if you are shopping for a new drive you can find competing technologies for cheaper and in larger capacities. However, the later versions of SCSI are very fast, even faster than the current standard, SATA, and have more than enough bandwidth to saturate a USB or Firewire connection. So if you have an old SCSI drive lying around it may be worth it to give it a new life as an external drive.
2. ATA/IDE (Advanced Technology Attachment/Internal Drive Electronics): An older standard that was in use for a long time, so there are a lot of hard drives still floating around out there. Its successor, SATA, is available in larger capacities and is usually cheaper, but if you already have an ATA drive you might as well put it to good use.
3. SATA (Serial Advanced Technology Attachment): This faster, serial replacement for the ATA interface is the most common storage interface found in modern computers. It also has the added bonus of having smaller, more convenient cables than ATA, so SATA drives tend to be easy to install.
4. SAS (Serial Attached Small Computer System Interface): SAS is the serial successor to SCSI, offering extremely fast bandwidth. In fact, it's so fast and so much more expensive than the alternatives that it's probably a waste to use it in an external drive, at least until USB 3.0 or other external interfaces become available that can take advantage of its 150 or 300 megabytes per second of bandwidth.
Hard drives come in four typical form factors:
1. 5.25" - Usually only used for optical drives.
2. 3.5" - The standard size for desktop drives.
3. 2.5" - The standard size for laptop drives.
4. 1.8" - An ultracompact drive for netbooks or digital media players.
Strictly speaking, there's nothing wrong with putting a smaller hard drive in an enclosure designed for a larger form factor: the drive might rattle around in the enclosure a little bit if you don't secure it in place, but as long as you have the correct cable to plug into the drive everything should work fine. Of course, it's physically impossible to stuff a larger hard drive into a smaller enclosure, so make sure you don't err on the small side.
Step Three: Pick your enclosure
You need a port on your computer or device to plug your external hard drive into. Most computers will have at least a USB or Ethernet port, but there are other options. If you want to speed up your connection to your external hard drive you can always buy an expansion card with a new interface controller and port.1. USB 1.0 (Universal Serial Bus) The old USB spec is limited to 1.5 MB/s and is not very useful for disk intensive operations or large files, but if you are using an older computer or working with smaller files it will get the job done, albeit slowly.
2. USB 2.0 The most common interface port on modern computers clocks in at up to 60 MB/s. This should be sufficient for all but the most intensive storage applications.
3. FireWire 400/800 FireWire controllers are currently available in two versions, 400 and 800. The version number refers to the approximate bandwidth in megabits, which translates into connection speeds of 49 MB/s and 98 MB/s, respectively. Like USB 2.0, these speeds should be sufficient for almost any normal data usage.
4. Ethernet Pretty much every computer in the world has an Ethernet port. Depending on your computer network controller, it may operate at 10, 100, 1,000 or even 10,000 megabits per second (although the 10 gigabit controllers are currently very expensive). This translates into speeds of 1.16 MB/s, 11.6 MB/s, 116 MB/s or 1,160 MB/s. Aside from its ubiquity, another advantage of an Ethernet enclosure is that you can plug the hard drive into a router and access it from any computer on your network. Enclosures with Ethernet ports may also be referred to as NAS, or Network Attached Storage, devices.
5. WiFi Some network enclosures cut out the middle man and combine a hard drive with a wireless router, allowing you to plug a hard drive into the device and then access it wirelessly.
6. eSATA (external Serial Advanced Technology Attachment) eSATA is an external connection designed specifically for SATA hard drives. A SATA hard drive typically has to convert its data signal to either USB, Firewire or Ethernet data specifications, resulting in some inefficiency. An eSATA connection means the hard drive does not need to convert the data before sending it to the computer or device requesting it, which results in a more efficient drive that uses less power and has generally faster seek times. However, eSATA ports are more rare than either USB or Firewire and are usually only found on DVRs or other digital media devices.
If you have multiple hard drives lying around and you don't want to buy an enclosure for all of them, look for an enclosure that is easy to disassemble, or even a "dock-style" enclosure where the hard drive is plugged in like a big cartridge.
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