Helping people with computers... one answer at a time.
External hard drives are handy and portable, but occasionally it might be nice to move all that storage into your PC. You probably can.
Is it possible to use my external hard drive as an internal hard drive? I have an XTRA DISK external hard drive with a Western Digital WD300 enhanced IDE hard drive. I would like to make it an internal hard drive.
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In most cases the answer is a resounding yes. In fact, I've done exactly this myself.
However, there are a few caveats to be aware of.
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Most external hard drives are simply standard hard drives in a box with an additional circuit board that converts their SATA or IDE interface into a USB or Firewire interface. Add an external power supply, or "brick" and it's very simple, and a very handy use of the technology.
So yes, you can open the case, and you'll likely find a standard hard drive that you can then install directly into your PC.
Some things to be aware of, though:
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This voids the manufacturer's warranty. After you break the seal and open the box, you're on your own.
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Be sure it has the interface you expect. I recently opened up one of my external hard drives to find out that it had a SATA interface, rather than the expected IDE interface.
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It won't be one of your faster drives. My expectation is that drive manufacturer's use their slower drives in external boxes. Not only because the drive speed is typically no longer the limiting factor when placed behind a USB or Firewire interface, but because slower drives run cooler, and external drive boxes rarely include cooling fans.
With all those caveats in mind, this is exactly what I did when one of my external drives went bad. I removed it from the USB enclosure and installed it into a PC where I ran several disk recovery tools in an attempt to avoid data loss. Once completed, I decided to leave it in the PC and simply shared it out for use by other machines on my LAN.
Note that the reverse is also true: you can purchase external hard drive kits without the hard drive. This is another great way to lengthen the life of a hard drive should its hosting machine die or become obsolete for other reasons. By extracting the hard drive and placing it in an external enclosure, the drive becomes portable and easily usable on any number of other machines.
As a side note, as you move hard drives from external enclosures to an internal installation, or vice-versa, the formatting and contents will likely be preserved. Having done this a time or two, in each case the data that was on my hard drive was preserved and immediately available in its new configuration.
Article C3121 - August 19, 2007 « »
Leo A. Notenboom has been playing with computers since he
was required to take a programming class in 1976. An 18 year career as a programmer at Microsoft soon followed.
After "retiring" in 2001, Leo started Ask Leo! in 2003 as a place for answers
to common computer and technical questions. More about Leo.
May 27, 2012 5:52 AM
Recently tried to use my external hdd as internal ,opened the box and found a usb 3.0 micro b female connector on the hdd board. Are there any adapters to go from usb 3.0 micro b female or ss usb 3.0 male to sata. I tried to search but results were questionable.I'd really like to plug this external drive into the motherboard as efficiently as possible(read cheaply).
December 22, 2012 7:36 PM
I have the same issue, the USB connector is on the hard drive's PCB board, and there are no SATA connectors? It's 2012, and I know stuff changes, but I bought the drive with the hopes of taking it out of the external case and putting it inside my laptop. Short of a converter, I would need a whole new PCB / Logic Board to use this drive as an internal. If I had a converter, I could use it in a desktop with a 2.5-3.5 adapter. However, without the new PCB there is just not enough room. Also, the height is like 15mm, luckily my Alienware laptop has enough space to hold a drive that thick, but it does not have enough space lengthwise to fit with an adapter. So, if anyone knows where to buy the adapter, USB3 to SATA, or if anyone knows where to buy a new PCB with SATA connectors, I would be very greatful. BTW: My drive is a Western Digital (WD) MyPassport 2TB model, the internal drive model number is WD20NMVW. Before you Google that P/N, it is never sold outside of the combo package as a stand alone drive. The closest thing and possibly the drive I would need to swap the PCB for is WD20NPVT, but I have not found any articles with someone trying this or any success? Please help whoever can shed some light on a way to fix my situation?
Thanks,
David
January 6, 2013 2:51 PM
I have a question , I have a Western Digital External Hard Drive (1Tb) and my internal macbook pro 13" is full. I have bootcamp on it to so I can run Windows too. My question is can i convert the WD hard drive to internal and split the hard disk in two (mac and windows) as i did before? Or is it better to buy an other internal disk and put it in. Can a Macbook Pro 13" run 2 internal disks. Thanks in advice, Giulia.
08-Jan-2013
January 8, 2013 3:55 PM
I had the same situation as Leo with a failed external drive. I did a google search and found a youtube video that showed how to remove the drive from the enclosure and then install it as a slave drive in my pc.
This was my first time doing something like this, so watching a video of it step by step gave me the confidence to do it myself.
Bang, I was able to use the drive gain.
I would like to take a moment and just say that Leo is always saying you need to backup your data.
Guess what? He's right! That failed external drive was my ONLY copy of the data. I got lucky that time, but now I make sure to have 3 or more backups of my most precious data, mostly photos.
March 23, 2013 4:13 AM
I did this — changed an external USB drive to an internal SATA — and it works fine. But there's one weird thing: the drive still shows up in the list when I click on the "Safely Remove Hardware" icon, as if it were still a removable USB drive.