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

the same applies to TV recorders. They use PC-grade DVD burners and HDDs you can scavenge before trashing them.

And yes, all externals I popped open were standard HDDs with an adapter, I assume it's cheaper that way as it is mass-production of the same drives for multiple uses.

Quite a few external DVD burners were actually laptop hardware in a fancy case.

Hi Jimbo, you were lucky there, I had a friend try that with a similarly broken WD or Seagate, forget which, external drive and the connectors were hard soldered to the drive and the drive was some non-standard crap.

I did the opposite, I came up with a spare 320GB 2.5" drive so I bought an enclosure for it for $15, at the time.

bobafetthotmail said:

the same applies to TV recorders. They use PC-grade DVD burners and HDDs you can scavenge before trashing them.

And yes, all externals I popped open were standard HDDs with an adapter, I assume it's cheaper that way as it is mass-production of the same drives for multiple uses.

Quite a few external DVD burners were actually laptop hardware in a fancy case.

Click to expand...

Hi there
Thanks for that tip

I had a DVD recorder that was due a one way trip to the tip -- removed the DVD writer (does DVD-RAM too as well as DVD+/- R(W)'s -- but it definitely was a slimline laptop DVD writer.

Put it in an enclosure with a USB ===>Sata adapter -- powered from the USB. Works just fine as an external USB on the very rare occasions I need a DVD machine whether read or write -- use it for ripping DVD's to Region and CSS Free ISO files which I then save to HDD -- AnyDVD does this -

BTW W8 allows direct mount of virtual ISO's so you can use VLC / WinDVD etc for playing these directly. (Win 7 also but you'll need a 3rd party "Virtual mounter" type of application.


Rep'd you + 1 for that piece of helpful info over the DVD inside a DVD recorder.

Cheers
jimbo

haha, good catch.
Hardware manufacturers are going to hate me, but I hate trashing stuff I can reuse.
I systematically disassemble everything to see if there is something I can reuse/repurpose before trashing. I offer discounts on stuff I sell if they can bring me useful "trash".
Some time ago a guy saved the cost of a 500GB HDD and a DVD burner in a mid-range rig I sold him by bringing me a broken TV recorder (that had both a DVD player and a functional HDD inside).
The shop rarely needs stuff like zip cables or internal connectors. I also have tons of screws for free.