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How to repair USB3 ext drive when power or USB connector breaks
Hi there
just recently I had the power connection fail on an INTENSO USB3 ext drive -- as it was a 3GB drive I didn't want to lose all the data on it.
Anyway I cracked open the case and it was simply a 3GB SATA Barracuda 7200 RPM normal HDD with a power and USB connector card embedded in the case.
So I just removed the HDD and connected it up into a SATA slot on my desktop and it works fine as an INTERNAL drive (still fast too).
Also frees up a valuable USB3 slot on my computer. (I only have 2 USB3 slots so each one is valuable).
If I really want to use this as an external drive then I'd just get another SATA==>USB3 enclosure --but the disk is a bit heavy to use as a portable.
( I got the INTENSO drive for 70 EUR -- so even breaking it up it's still a bargan for a 3TB Barracuda SATA drive - whish Id' bought to or 3 of these and converted them to INTERNAL HDD's. !!).
Seems most of these larger external powered (not self powered) USB drives are simply normal HDD's contained in a SATA==>USB2 or USB3 container.
Good way of getting cheap drives too as the stores are too ignorant to know this. !!
So if you have decent USB ext drives around you can easily turn these into internal HDD's when you upgrade / get a new desktop type computer. Don't chuck them away -- and if you SPAN them you can turn for example two 500GB drives into a single 1TB one.
Cheers
jimbo