Questions about my SSD and external drive.

[Hatashi]

I recently built my first PC and for the time being I'm stuck with this.

• Crucial M500 - SSD - 120 GB.
• Seagate 500GB External Hard Drive.

I had a 2TB HDD that I can't use right now and I'm waiting for my next paycheck to buy more SSD.

Now I'd like advice on how to utilize this 500GB drive to it's fullest capabilities. I have my Steam library on there and I'd like to know if it's using it's full speed or not.

I plugged it in back through the USB 3.0 port, how can I check to make sure it's good?

I also heard something about taking it out of it's case and connecting it via SATA or something? Anyone know more about that?

Thanks!

 

[ICIT2LOL]

Hatashi of course you can do that I have done it many times. Take the drive casing apart - you might wreck the casing doing it - then take the drive from inside the casing - it will just pull out as if you were removing a drive from a laptop.

Now I am assuming it will be a SATA drive and not an IDE one - take the side off the machine and ground yourself before touching anything inside the machine.
Then find a SATA power cable and fit it to the drive - then just hook up the drive with a SATA data cable to the board SATA port. Turn on the machine and see if the drive is recognised in Computer.

If it is you can then test want you want to and if all is ok then power off remove the cables from the drive and fit the drive into a 3.5" bay adaptor and then fit that into a 3.5" bay. Reconnect the cables and you are finished. Test to see if it is still recognised - done!

 

[mjf]

I'd be waiting before pulling the ext 500GB apart.
It's a 2.5" drive plus you have USB 3 connectivity so I don't think a straight sata connection is going to really give you anything in the speed area from this drive. I keep it for what it's good for ultimately - an ext USB3 drive for data/backup/system images.

You can check the drive using chkdsk or Seagates's seatools diagnostics. You can check the speed using something like CrystalDiskMark. I think the small spinner will be the speed limiting factor and not the data connection.

 

[whs]

I would not pull it apart. USB3 gives you good performance - the Sata port would only be slightly better but not worth it.

 

[ICIT2LOL]

Well I tend to agree with the others I just thought you were bent on doing just that and rather than let you go in heavy handed did my lttle post.

Having said that I have pulled them apart as I described and frankly quite a few I found were NOT actually 6Gbs as you would expect the 3.0 external to contain but just some woefully slow 3Gbs drive That was not exclusive to the cheaper brands either!!

Personally I do not like large drives as I - a) don't store a humungous amount of data and - b) because if it goes south so does a lot of data with it and retrieving it can be painful - but that is just me I would sooner have several smaller drives than one large one.