Can I convert an external USB hard drive into an internal one?

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I have taken many internal drives and placed them in external USB enclosures, and they have always kept their contents. (Or, at least, they didn't lose anything else. Several of these were from non-booting Windows systems, and nearly all the data was recoverable once moved to another computer.)

Whether one can move a USB drive between Windows and Macs, on the other hand, I have no clue.

How about the reverse? I have a removable internal IDE HD (D:) but when I replace it, I have to reboot. Can I make it a USB plug and play?
Thanks

Leo,

The power adapter (ad6008) of my WD harddrive has shut down. This adapter supplies 5V and 12V to the drive by a din plug. Is it still possible to use the drive internally?

Thank you for the reply.

Leo,
I have a cable to convert an IDE HD to USB.
I would like to put this into my computer case and power it with the computers power supply.
My question is:
Can I cut the 5 volt cable and ad a toggle switch to turn the drive off when not in use?
Will My Computer see the drive when I turn the power back on?
Thanks for the reply.

i have a Maxtor SATA external HDD and i wanted to convert it into an internal...how can i do this? as the slave connector port is on a seperate board, i dont see any way to connect this? plz help!

I have a WD5000aajs external hard drive that has about a hundred gigs of music on it and my fiance plug the wrong power adapter into to it on accident. Was wandering if there is any way to hook it up to my desktop so I can atleast get my music off?? Would appreciate any help you can give me!
Thanks Alot

hey,I want to make my USB hard drive an internal one because it keeps getting disconnected.Its a transcend storejet 25p USB hard drive.So can you tell me what the problem is and please tell me whether games can be run on a USB external hard drive.

Recently my external hardrive off 1TB wasqnt detected by windows anymore so i opened it and inside where 2 SATA drives off 500GB each, so i hooked them up to my pc to try and recover the data but it seems that only 1 drive has the filesystem on it from both drives.

Do you know of any way i can still recover the data from both cause datarecovery programs only manage to get around 5% off data off the second drive cause they cant detect the system (wich is FAT32)

Yes you can connect a USB as an internal drive. I used a seagate 320Gb laptop drive as an internal backup drive in my Windows Home Server. I did not open the case so I do not know what the interface is, I suspect it is SATA. I cut a Mini D cable that I had laying around to about 10 inches long. I built a 10 pin header (with a key pin) from components to plug it into the motherboard. I siamesed both ports power leads to keep adequate wattage to the drive even under heavy use(there is only 500ma per port doubled to 1000ma or 5 watts). I also added an external switch to the harness so I can turn it off for secure storage. I did not remove the case and I can remove the drive simply by unplugging it from the harness. This also means I did not void the warranty. Works great and can be turned on at any time, just make sure you disconnect it (in windows) before turning it off. I also tried this with a mybook 160Gb drive (12v/IDE interface board 3.5" drive). I removed the case and covered the interface board to prevent a short. Modified the power plug to connect it to a spare hard drive power. It also worked great, matter of fact it responded faster than before. I believe this was due to the really short USB cable compared to the original 6 footer it came with. Just remember this is a USB interface and it is not going to be fast, but is a good backup and streams music just fine. There are many resources on the net to figure out the wiring.

Yes you can connect a USB as an internal drive. I used a seagate 320Gb laptop drive as an internal backup drive in my Windows Home Server. I did not open the case so I do not know what the interface is, I suspect it is SATA. I cut a Mini D cable that I had laying around to about 10 inches long. I built a 10 pin header (with a key pin) from components to plug it into the motherboard. I siamesed both ports power leads to keep adequate wattage to the drive even under heavy use(there is only 500ma per port doubled to 1000ma or 5 watts). I also added an external switch to the harness so I can turn it off for secure storage. I did not remove the case and I can remove the drive simply by unplugging it from the harness. This also means I did not void the warranty. Works great and can be turned on at any time, just make sure you disconnect it (in windows) before turning it off. I also tried this with a mybook 160Gb drive (12v/IDE interface board 3.5" drive). I removed the case and covered the interface board to prevent a short. Modified the power plug to connect it to a spare hard drive power. It also worked great, matter of fact it responded faster than before. I believe this was due to the really short USB cable compared to the original 6 footer it came with. Just remember this is a USB interface and it is not going to be fast, but is a good backup and streams music just fine. There are many resources on the net to figure out the wiring.

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