hard drive enclosures and external drives

aqueoushumour01

Hi. I will be buying a new hard drive soon, and one possibility seems to be to buy an enclosure and an internal drive so that it runs like an external drive. Is this correct? What's the advantage of doing this over just buying a normal external drive?


Something I'm really thinking about doing is buying an external drive and making a clone of my current hard drive. Then get a enclosure and open up the external drive, putting this inside my laptop and inserting my current drive into the enclosure to run it as an external drive. Is it as simple as making a clone and then running windows off my new hard drive? Will the computer recognise the windows xp files, registry files etc.. and run it as normal as though the drive was never swapped or is there something else I need to do ? - it all seems too simple.

motorguy

aqueoushumour01 wrote: »

Hi. I will be buying a new hard drive soon, and one possibility seems to be to buy an enclosure and an internal drive so that it runs like an external drive. Is this correct? What's the advantage of doing this over just buying a normal external drive?


Something I'm really thinking about doing is buying an external drive and making a clone of my current hard drive. Then get a enclosure and open up the external drive, putting this inside my laptop and inserting my current drive into the enclosure to run it as an external drive. Is it as simple as making a clone and then running windows off my new hard drive? Will the computer recognise the windows xp files, registry files etc.. and run it as normal as though the drive was never swapped or is there something else I need to do ? - it all seems too simple.

People tend to use an external caddy if they have a spare hard disk they want to make use of.

Why would you want to clone your current hard disk, then swap the clone in? But yes it 'should' work.

I've another drive for my laptop that i've previously formatted in the machine and installed the o/s, drivers, etc. When i sell the laptop i can simply swap over the drives the day it sells (on ebay), and i have no worries of people recovering personal files.

Conor_3

aqueoushumour01 wrote: »

Hi. I will be buying a new hard drive soon, and one possibility seems to be to buy an enclosure and an internal drive so that it runs like an external drive. Is this correct? What's the advantage of doing this over just buying a normal external drive?


Something I'm really thinking about doing is buying an external drive and making a clone of my current hard drive. Then get a enclosure and open up the external drive, putting this inside my laptop and inserting my current drive into the enclosure to run it as an external drive. Is it as simple as making a clone and then running windows off my new hard drive? Will the computer recognise the windows xp files, registry files etc.. and run it as normal as though the drive was never swapped or is there something else I need to do ? - it all seems too simple.

I think you'll find you can't open it up and swap the drives over as most of the drives in these enclosures are 3.5" and laptop ones are 2.5" so not only is there insufficient room but its a different connector too. Even if you could, you find that the external drives are usually the slower type which are used to keep the heat down.

Leopard

Conor wrote: »

I think you'll find you can't open it up and swap the drives over as most of the drives in these enclosures are 3.5" and laptop ones are 2.5" so not only is there insufficient room but its a different connector too. Even if you could, you find that the external drives are usually the slower type which are used to keep the heat down.

Nonsense.

Buying an external drive of larger capacity than your laptop's, cloning it and then swapping the two drives over is a routine way to do it.

Alternatively, buy a bare drive and an empty enclosure/caddy. Then carry out the same procedure. (That's what I usually do.)

Work out which solution is cheaper for the new specification of drive to which you want to upgrade your laptop.

Putting your existing hard drive in an external enclosure gives it a new life in semi-retirement.

If, however, your existing drive is old and hard-used, it may be coming to the end of its life (or at least its reliability) anyway; in which case the investment in the enclosure may not be worthwhile.

Nevertheless, the enclosure could be used with another drive in the future.

Frankly, it really boils down to deciding what enclosure you would most like to have as an external drive. This includes factors such as what type of external ports you want your external drive to have. It also includes what type of chipset you want your external drive to have (particularly if it is to use Firewire).

The only thing you need to be careful about (apart from not touching the electronics on either drive with your fingers while they're exposed) is ensuring that your new drive is the right size (2.5" - or possibly, now, 1.8") and of the correct type (PATA or SATA/SATAii) for your laptop.

Cloning your new drive by a process that does it block-by-block, instead of copying it by simple file transfer, takes longer but the result will be more certain to work (assuming your existing drive does now) because it produces an exact replica - and this will include all your configuration preferences and software registrations.

Bear in mind that a cloned drive will have the same name and identity as the original drive (because it's a clone of it), so it's best to change the name of the original drive immediately, once you've swapped them over and it's inside its new enclosure. (It may not confuse you but it will certainly confuse your network and, probably, your laptop if you don't!).

I prefer drives than spin at 7,200 rpm in my laptops but most people go for drives with a spin speed of 5,400 rpm, upon the theory that they consume less battery power and because they generate less heat.

If you have insufficient RAM in your laptop it will make more use of Virtual Memory - which slows things down, wears out the hard drive and generates heat (which makes the fan run more). To make things worse, that also reduces battery life.

So, make sure you have an adequate amount of RAM; especially if you're going to run a faster drive.

aqueoushumour01

that's a big help Leopard thanks. So if I clone my hard drive (what software is available to do that?), I just put in the new drive and my laptop will think it's the old one and run as though nothing happened?

My current hard-drive is only 1 yr old, it's just got too small. Good tip about the speed of the hard-drive - I'm going to have either 1.5GB or 2GB of RAM in total so should be fine to go for a 7200 rpm drive

weegie.geek

Replace it with a hard drive of identical RPM.

If you have a 4200 or 5400 RPM drive and you put in a 7200RPM it might run too hot for your laptop to be able to adequately cool.

The amount of ram you have and the speed of your hard drive are completely unrelated. Having a small amount of ram and a fast hard drive will be of no effect whatsoever. Nonsense, I think the word was.

Conor_3

Leopard wrote: »

Nonsense.

Buying an external drive of larger capacity than your laptop's, cloning it and then swapping the two drives over is a routine way to do it.

Alternatively, buy a bare drive and an empty enclosure/caddy. Then carry out the same procedure. (That's what I usually do.)

It certainly is a problem if you buy an enclosure with a 3.5" HDD or buy an empty enclosure for a 3.5" HDD if you're doing this with a laptop WHICH WAS THE POINT I WAS MAKING, RETARD.

But hey, !!!!!! do I know? I've only been into IT for TWENTY FOUR YEARS.

esbo

Is that why you reposted rather than edit your original post?

KeithP

Conor wrote: »

But hey, !!!!!! do I know? I've only been into IT for TWENTY FOUR YEARS.

Twenty four years ago, when you were just 13 years old if we are to believe your signature statement, the first portable computer had just been introduced by Compaq (in 1984). Interestingly, and certainly relevent to this thread, that machine had no hard drive installed.

weegie.geek

Leopard wrote: »

Weegie Geek,

You contradict your very own argument.

If you have insufficient RAM in your laptop to prevent it having to use Virtual Memory heavily, and if (as you protest - in contradiction of Hitachi) having a 7,200 rpm drive in it will make it generate more heat than a 5,400 rpm drive, the logical extension of your argument is that having a small amount of RAM would make a significant (indeed, potentially dangerous in your opinion) difference - not "be of no effect whatsoever." :T

I disagree, I don't think I contradict myself at all. While there will be a difference of a few degrees between a hard drive being idle and at load, it's the difference between RPMs that will make the most difference. Faster RPM, more power consumption, more heat.

The power consumed by the read/write heads and the moving of the arm will be negligble, as will the heat created by this movement.

It's true that there is a specific model of hard drive that runs cooler than its peers, but I still would be wary of putting a 7200RPM drive in a machine that's designed for a slower, cooler running drive. I definitely wouldn't recommend it to someone else who came to me asking for advice, it'd be irresponsible in the same way that advising someone to overclock is. It works fine for most people, but you shouldn't recommend it without making absolutely clear that things can go wrong.

You were happy to tell the OP it was fine to put a 7200RPM drive into laptops/enclosures, but didn't mention any specific model until you were called out on it. Why all of a sudden have the goalposts shifted, and we're talking about a specific model of a specific manufacturer?

Also, not that I'd ever question marketing blurb on a manufacturer's website, but have any hardware review/benchmarking sites actually tested the 7K200 against other drives to see if the temperature boast stands true?

Just checked a few of my drives at idle, and after roughly 2 minutes' solid load.

500GB Hitachi - 44 c idle / 44 c load
500GB Samsung - 35 c idle / 36 c load (all 4 identical drives do the same so it's not a one-off)
80GB Maxtor - 40 c idle / 41 c load, occasionally jumping up to 42 and then straight back down to 41 c.

All drives are 7200RPM. The temeperature barely changes.

The "wears out the hard drive" thing is a fallacy as well. Google published data fairly recently that suggests load has almost no effect on a drive. The main factor that kills a drive is plain old age, regardless of whether it's had a busy life or not.

One last thing. Holy !!!! Conor. I might not agree with Leopard, and I've butted heads with him before. He's a windup merchant and I don't like his condescending attitude. Engaging in conversation to try and correct someone is one thing, but when you start calling people retards? Instant fail. When you start quoting how long you've been doing something to try and win the argument? Looking a bit desperate.

If the amount of time you've been doing something is directly proportionate to your aptitude, I can only guess that you've only just been introduced to other people and society in general, because my god, you're an !!!!!!.

rdwarr

KeithP wrote: »

Twenty four years ago, when you were just 13 years old if we are to believe your signature statement, the first portable computer had just been introduced by Compaq (in 1984). Interestingly, and certainly relevent to this thread, that machine had no hard drive installed.

I still have one

Perhaps that's because I've been working in IT for TWENTY-NINE YEARS and have never yet found the need to call somebosy a "retard" :rolleyes:

Apologies to those offended by "Geek Wars" here - we're not all like that.