Do-it-yourself external storage. USB drive from laptop hard drive

If you are going to purchase accessories for computer repair, then a SATA USB adapter is the first thing you need to pay attention to. Such a device allows communication between the two most common interfaces. The SATA standard is used on almost all internal drives personal computers and laptops. All modern PCs are equipped with USB ports.

What can this adapter be used for? This is exactly the tool you will need in case of failure hard drive. If things go wrong with the HDD, there is a high chance that the computer will become unbootable. In this case, you will have to replace the disk, but the information that was stored on the previous drive will be lost.

If the HDD is partially damaged, this does not mean that all files on it are lost forever. By using a USB to SATA adapter, you will likely be able to recover most of your data. Even if the disk is not initialized, there are many free programs, which will allow you to scan partitions and detect any information that needs to be recovered.

Hardware failure is not the only reason to use an adapter. For example, a user may want to upgrade to a larger and faster SSD drive. Using the adapter, you will be able to transfer all the old data to the new disk yourself, without turning to specialists for help. In addition, HDDs have become incredibly cheap. Any user who regularly updates their computer usually has at least 1 drive with a capacity of more than 500 GB. With this simple adapter you can turn your HDD into external drive to access old files.

Anker USB 3 to SATA Converter

Not all SATA USB devices are created equal. Some use an outdated standard that negatively impacts throughput. Others may not be compatible with newer drive types. There are varieties of adapters that stand out from the rest. First of all, you should pay attention to Anker USB 3 to SATA Converter Adapter Cable.

Studying Anker products, one can come to the conclusion that the company has no shortage of components and peripheral devices ah for computers. Judging by numerous reviews, everything from chargers and ending with cables or adapters, users rate them very highly. You may not have seen the products of this company in local retail outlets, but you can easily find them in online stores.

Anker's USB to SATA adapter is a simple device that gets the job done. The adapter is equipped only with the most necessary equipment, and there are no unnecessary components. The developers have done everything possible to ensure that the device copes perfectly with the task assigned to it. The USB SATA adapter is a black rectangular box. This allows you to place it on a flat surface, preventing the drive from detaching during use.

There are 2 cables that can be connected to the back of the device: USB 3 for data transfer and an optional power cord for use with high-power drives. The cables are reliable and durable, making this adapter useful even if the distance between the computer and the SATA 2 device is short (causing the cables to be bent). Thanks to its impeccable design, the device will look great in an office or digital repair shop.

Adapter capabilities from Anker

Unlike some other adapters on the market, Anker is equipped with a hardware SATA 3 controller. If the device relies on software to convert signals, this may cause performance and compatibility issues. Fortunately, the Anker hardware controller used is standard and has been thoroughly tested with various devices. This means that almost any computer or drive that can be physically connected to this adapter will work. Thanks to the built-in power adapter, the device supports both 2.5- and 3.5-inch drives.

The USB 3 port is only capable of delivering a relatively small amount of power. This is enough to power compact 2.5-inch drives and SSD drives. But 3.5-inch devices will require a little more power, and a power adapter will help in such a situation. As for compatibility, you can use hard disks, SSDs, Blu-Ray drives, DVD recorders and combo drives. The adapter works with almost all operating systems from Microsoft, from Windows 98 to Windows 10. Mac OS is also supported. Theoretically, there is no reason to think that a SATA to USB adapter will refuse to work with Linux, but this system is not officially supported.

Thanks to the USB 3 interface, data transfer occurs according to an accelerated procedure. The theoretical limit is 5 Gbps, but this is quite difficult to achieve in practice. When using an SSD, read speeds are typically around 350 Mbps and write speeds are around 250 Mbps. Record data transfer rates can only be achieved if you use the fastest SSDs available on the market. In cases with regular PC hard drives, the maximum speed is 120 Mbps for reading and 100 Mbps for writing. In this case, the reduction in USB throughput is not due to the adapter, but to outdated HDD technology.

There's not much on this adapter additional functions, because simplicity is its main advantage. The operating system does not recognize it as an adapter, but simply sees a standard one external storage via USB. This means that all built-in software for Reserve copy will work without failure. You will be able to use any data recovery program or create images without any special drivers and settings. Due to the lack of drivers, the SATA USB adapter will work in safe mode, and this makes it ideal for diagnostics and repairs.

Inateck USB 3 to IDE/SATA Converter

The Inateck Universal USB 3 to IDE/SATA Converter is created by a popular peripheral device manufacturer that develops not only consumer, but also professional devices. Many of Inatek's products offer advanced functionality, while its prices are comparable to its competitors.

Despite the large number of options, the adapter is compatible with all types of operating systems and drives via USB. The only major difference between the adapter and other similar devices is its support for IDE drives. Such drives have long gone out of fashion, but they are still used by some users. This connection standard is used for PCs, laptops, CD and DVD drives, as well as devices that read floppy disks.

Many adapters are only compatible with small IDE drives because they don't have a power connection. But in this case, thanks to a special power cable, you can easily use not only 3.5-inch, but also 5.25-inch drives. The adapter works with OSX, as well as operating systems from Microsoft, from Windows XP to Windows 10.

09.07.2015

Greetings to you friends, readers and visitors of my blog. In this article I will talk about sata cable. As you know, all computer technology manufacturers have long switched to sata power supply.

This article will describe all the nuances of creating sata cable or else it is called sata adapter, with your own hands. And so let's begin the process.

To begin with, we need a non-working one. And you need to remove the longest one from the power supply sata cable.

The longest cable is desirable, but if this is not available, of course a short one is also possible.

In most cases it happens that sata There is some other connector attached to the cable. You can leave it on and remove it if you don’t need it or get in the way for some reason.

In my case, two wires on the additional connector were cut off and in order to get rid of the unnecessary Molex connector I had to disassemble the sata adapter.

Sata cable disassembly

This connector is very easy to disassemble. All the wires on the sat are on plastic clips that need to be lifted with the tip of a pair of scissors.

Without letting go, pull the wire back; without force and without damage, the wire is carefully removed from the connector.

To cut off the excess wires from the Molex, I use a tool in the form of wire cutters from the women's manicure set. You can also use small electrical wire cutters.

Once all the excess wires are cut off, insert the wires into place. Be careful when removing wires, do not remove them all at once, otherwise you will get confused.

Remove one wire, cut off the excess and insert it back. And we clean the cut ends of the wires for soldering.

Molex disassembly

We will connect the cable made using sata to our computer power supply via a Molex connector

To do this you will have to disassemble the molex connector itself. We take the free Molex connector on the power supply and disassemble it. The lugs on the wires in Molex have tabs or tabs that hold them in the connector itself. To remove the four wires we need to find these tabs and bend them inside the tip. To find this ear, use a bright flashlight.

If the ear is not located, use a thin screwdriver or scissors around the tip

Once all the wires are removed, you need to solder the cleaned ends of the sata cable wires. Solder each wire by color. If for some reason you were unable to sing, you can do the following. We take the wires of the sata cable, clean their ends by about 1.5 cm and screw them onto the tip of the molex and twist them so that they do not slip.

As we said above, the tips of the Molex wires are held on the ears in the connector and therefore, before putting the wires in place, you need to bend the eye on each wire

We assemble the molex connector and connect it sata nutrition. All that's left to do is check sata adapter. In my case, everything works to this day.

How to quickly make a sata cable

There is another option to make a sata adapter. To do this, take a sata cable as usual, clean the ends by about 1.5 cm, twist the ends of the wires so that

Attention, this method is not safe since at any time the wire can jump out of the plug and short-circuit.

Do not use ordinary glues, otherwise it will be very difficult to disassemble the connector.

For what reason was the article written?

I once encountered cases where there was not enough power on my unit sata cable for food from behind hard drives.

It would be an option to transfer the cable from one hard drive or go to the store and buy a sata adapter.

But since I like to create things with my own hands, I decided to make this cable myself. And step by step the process went along the flow.

You might be interested

Introduction.
Most laptop owners sooner or later face the problem of running out of space. As a rule, laptops with screen sizes up to 15 inches inclusive do not have a free second slot for a 2.5-inch device. Therefore, owners are forced to think about either replacing the laptop itself or replacing its hard drive. After replacing the hard drive, there is always an old drive left, which can easily be turned into an external one USB drive for data transfer.
Naturally, you can purchase a 2.5 inch mobile HDD and turn it into an external drive. Fortunately, the cost of external drives allows this. For example, at the time of writing, for a 250 GB mobile hard drive they are asking $40, and for a 500 GB device from WD they are asking only $45.
We decide on the type of hard drive.
To be fair, it should be noted that an ordinary desktop 3.5-inch hard drive can also be turned into an external drive - you just can’t call it mobile. If you have an unused 2.5 or 3.5 inch hard drive, then first of all you need to decide on the type of its interface.
Today on the market there are the following types of interface: IDE (ATA) and various SATA options. As a rule, all SATA interfaces are backward compatible with each other, and we will not dwell on their variations. The situation is completely different between IDE and SATA interfaces, which are absolutely incompatible with each other and have different connectors.

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The figure shows two hard drives with different interfaces. Hard drives have a mobile format of 2.5 inches. On the left is a hard drive with a SATA interface, on the right is a hard drive with an IDE interface.

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In our hands was a 250 GB hard drive from Western Digital Scorpio Blue series with a SATA interface. This drive was used in an Acer laptop for a long time, but its capacity became insufficient, and it was replaced with a more capacious 500 GB solution.

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Despite long-term use, the performance of the hard drive did not cause any complaints, so it was decided to use it as an external mobile drive. To do this, we had to find an external case for it, which is what we did. External case AGESTAR for 2.5 inch mobile hard drive.
Computer hardware stores offer a wide variety of external cases for 2.5-inch hard drives. Their key difference is as follows:
- body material,
- type of external port (interface),
- cost.

As a rule, stores offer various cases with a USB 2.0 interface, a much smaller number of cases with an eSATA interface, and even fewer cases with a combination of USB 2.0&eSATA. Several cases with a modern USB 3.0 interface were found on sale, but their cost exceeded the cost of the hard drive itself, so we did not consider them.

The key difference between USB 2.0 and eSATA interfaces is data transfer speed. Using the USB 2.0 interface allows for maximum compatibility, since these ports are available on all computers. A significant disadvantage of the USB 2.0 interface is its low data transfer speed, which will not allow you to unlock the full speed potential of your hard drive.

The eSATA port is more promising, but it is not widespread and is found only in expensive versions of motherboards, cases and laptops. The eSATA interface allows you to fully unleash the potential of SATA devices.

The material used can also be very different. In a simple case, it is plastic. In more expensive variations, an aluminum case with a leather cover is included.
The cost of external cases also varies. The cheapest option will cost the user $3, expensive versions will cost more than $100.

Buying a $100 case for a hard drive that costs less than $40 when new and is half the price once it's in use is, to say the least, wasteful. Therefore, for testing we were provided with a case costing a symbolic 3 dollars - AgeStar SUB2P1. Equipment and external inspection of AgeStar SUB2P1.

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We didn't expect any miracles from a device that costs three dollars, both in terms of equipment and in terms of performance. The device comes modestly packaged in a package. The front wall of the device is covered with a cardboard listing the key characteristics of the device. This includes support for 2.5-inch mobile hard drives or solid-state drives with a SATA interface, the presence of a USB 2.0 data transfer interface and various color options.
To be fair, it should be noted that our suppliers confirmed that they had not seen any other color for this case other than black.

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After opening the package, we were pleasantly surprised by the fact that the kit included an instruction manual entirely in Russian.

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The case is completely made of plastic. There are paper stickers on the front wall indicating the model, which will be erased in any case, so we recommend immediately removing them from the surface of the device.

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The material used to make the case is soft black plastic, which does not smell of anything and is uniform throughout its structure.

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The covers of the device come off in two different directions, which ensures easy removal and installation of the hard drive in an external case.

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The two sides of the outer case are secured using a plastic latch made from the material of the case. Thanks to the recesses on the walls, the lids are securely fixed and spilling any glass of liquid, or leaving the device in the rain, is unlikely to lead to any problems.

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The device is designed for SATA hard drives, which we have repeatedly emphasized. Inside there are controllers with SATA ports for power and data transfer.

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Mini is soldered on the side wall USB port for data transfer and power supply of the hard drive. There is no additional port to provide power to the drive, which may cause some problems for users. With a weak power supply that underestimates the voltage along the 5 volt line, you often have to deal with problems starting the hard drive. Typically, connecting the drive directly to a port on the motherboard rather than on the case system unit, the use of quality USB cable allows you to forget about this problem.

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Sellers of computer components often, as an advantage of this or that external case, talk about the presence of a USB data cable in the kit or offer to purchase it separately if it is not there. We advise our users not to pay attention to this, since a mini-USB-USB cable, as a rule, is available in almost every family and is often supplied with mobile phones. In our case, we successfully used a stale data cable from mobile phone Nokia.

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The next step was to install the hard drive into the case. This is done quite simply - by lightly pressing. The most important thing is to first correctly rotate the hard drive according to the power and SATA data ports located in the case.

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The absence of any protruding elements on the hard drive controller circuit allows you not to worry about its rear surface when transporting and using the device.

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Some users may argue that the plastic case does not provide adequate heat dissipation from the hard drive. Naturally, external cases made of aluminum cope with this task much more effectively. At the same time, we should not forget that mobile hard drives do not have such high power consumption that they suffer from overheating, and in laptops, as a rule, they are not additionally cooled with anything.

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After completing the assembly of the device, the stage of its testing and use begins. The supply of voltage to the device is accompanied by the glow of a blue LED, which also symbolizes the user about the process of data transfer. It should be noted that not everyone will have a smooth start when starting to work with the created external drive. If the hard drive has already been used, has been formatted and partitions have been created on it, you will not have any problems getting started. It works like a regular flash drive using the Plug&Play method. But those users who purchased a new hard drive without formatting and with no partitions will have a problem that will be associated with the absence of a drive letter in the “My Computer” tab.
To do this, you need to create partitions on the hard drive and format it. This can be done through various boot disks, but it’s better not to bother and do it in the Windows operating system itself.

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To do this, you need to go to the "Control Panel" through the "Start" section, then visit the "Administration" section. In this section, select “Computer Management”, where in the “Disk Management” tab you can partition and format the newly connected external drive. After creating partitions and formatting them, you will have access to them through the “My Computer” tab and you will be able to exchange with the drive as with a regular hard drive. Test configuration.
The assembled external drive was tested both on desktop computer, based on a modern Core i7 processor and no less modern motherboard, and on an Acer Aspire 7730 laptop based on a Core 2 Duo processor. It should be noted that the performance level at two various systems turned out to be comparable.

1. Data reading speed was tested in the HD Tach 3.0.4.0 program

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It's nice to note that the external drive we assembled shows much more high level performance than the WD My Passport Essential external hard drive we previously tested. The maximum data transfer speed was 34.3 Mb/s, and the average latency was about 17.9 ms.

2. Data reading speed in HD Tune 4.5.

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In the second synthetic dough we received data similar to the previous ones, which also turned out to be slightly better than that of the official external hard drive WD My Passport Essential.

3. Write speed of 64 MB files in HD Tune 4.5.

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Testing that is closer to practice is somewhat more valuable, by recording files of 64 MB in size. In this test, we received quite expected results, which were also limited only by the capabilities of the USB 2.0 interface.
Separately, I would like to note that throughout the entire testing, the temperature of the hard drive did not exceed 35 degrees Celsius, while a similar hard drive installed in the laptop had a temperature of about 43 degrees. Therefore, worrying about the operating conditions of the hard drive in this case on the part of users will be unnecessary.

4. Operating room loading speed Windows systems 7.

During practical testing of the loading speed of the Windows 7 operating system image, we received results similar to other external drives with a USB 2.0 interface.

5. Assessing the drive's performance in Windows environment 7.

We tested the performance of the external drive we assembled using the Windows 7 operating system. command line you need to call the command: “winsat disk -drive g -ran -write -count 10”, where “g” is the letter of the drive being tested in the system.

From the test results it is clear that the drive we assembled received a much higher rating than the factory solution WD My Passport Essential. Conclusion.
Based on the materials in this article, it is clear that any mobile hard drive can be turned into a good external drive without any hassle. Especially for testing, we asked for the cheapest external case, costing $3. Three dollars allows you to get an excellent external drive from a mobile hard drive, at least for data storage. Not to mention the fact that the same external case makes it easier to recover data from the hard drive of “dead” laptops.

Despite the fact that many people criticize AgeStar's products for their low quality, after many years of using them I have only a positive impression of them. First of all, it is at an affordable price. Defects occur in all manufacturers, although AgeStar has a slightly higher rate than Thermaltake. But the latter has no analogue to the presented external case for three dollars and with a 6-month warranty. We award AgeStar products with a gold medal of honor for their optimal performance/price ratio.

SATA (English: Serial ATA)- serial interface for data exchange with information storage devices. SATA is a development of the parallel interface, which after the advent of SATA was renamed PATA (Parallel ATA). - data cable connector. Hard drive data cable connector -

Description SATA

SATA uses a 7-pin connector instead of PATA's 40-pin connector. The SATA cable has a smaller area, due to which the resistance to air blowing through the computer components is reduced, and wiring inside the system unit is simplified.

Due to its shape, the SATA cable is more resistant to multiple connections. The SATA power cord is also designed to accommodate multiple connections. The SATA power connector supplies 3 supply voltages: +12 V, +5 V and +3.3 V; however, modern devices can operate without +3.3 V, which makes it possible to use a passive adapter from a standard IDE to SATA power connector. A number of SATA devices come with two power connectors: SATA and Molex.

The SATA standard abandoned the traditional PATA connection of two devices per cable; each device is assigned a separate cable, which eliminates the problem of the impossibility of simultaneous operation of devices located on the same cable (and the resulting delays), reduces possible problems during assembly (there is no problem of conflict between Slave/Master devices for SATA), eliminates the possibility of errors when using non-terminated PATA cables.

The SATA standard supports the command queuing function (NCQ, starting with SATA Revision 2.x).

The SATA standard does not provide for hot swapping of the active device (used Operating System) (up to SATA Revision 3.x), additionally connected drives must be disconnected gradually - power, cable, and connected in the reverse order - cable, power.

SATA connectors

SATA devices use two connectors: 7-pin (data bus connection) and 15-pin (power connection). The SATA standard provides the ability to use a standard 4-pin Molex connector instead of a 15-pin power connector. Using both types of power connectors at the same time may damage the device.

The SATA interface has two data transfer channels, from controller to device and from device to controller. LVDS technology is used to transmit the signal; the wires of each pair are shielded twisted pairs.

There is also a 13-pin combined SATA connector used in servers, mobile and portable devices for slim CD/DVD drives. Devices are connected using a SATA Slimline ALL-in-One Cable. It consists of a combined connector of a 7-pin connector for connecting the data bus and a 6-pin connector for connecting the device’s power supply. In addition, to connect to these devices, servers use a special adapter.

Using http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/SATA

The most interesting comments on the colors of the SATA power connector cable:

RU2012:"Adapters are available to convert a 4-pin Molex connector to a SATA power connector. However, since 4-pin Molex connectors do not provide 3.3 V, these adapters only provide 5 V and 12 V power and leave the 3.3 V lines disabled. This does not allow the use of such adapters with drives that require 3.3 V power - orange wire.

Recognizing this, hard drive manufacturers have largely left support for the 3.3V orange power cable option in their storage devices - power lines are not used in most devices.

HOWEVER, WITHOUT 3.3V POWER (orange wire), the SATA DEVICE MAY NOT BE ABLE TO HOT PLUG THE DISK..." - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_ATA

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