Salvaging an external hard drive.
March 11th, 2010Broken Western Digital 400gb external storage.. didn’t work anymore.. off warranty.. extract the internal drive.
7 Responses to “Salvaging an external hard drive.”
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I think Western Digital doesn’t put fans in the casing. You can get cases from other companies that include fans
Agree, If I can I always buy internal, but where I can’t I’ve switched to Seagate. So far a 1 tb version is holding up good.
Externals period are pretty horrible on death rates
WD is okay but Seagate makes better externals, albet more expensive
Vantec makes enclosers with power management systems, most are under $50.
I’ve tried external casings before but you have to be careful with them for a couple of reasons: 1) power mgmt 2) fan noise. The cheap casings don’t have the ability to manage their power. Meaning they are always running/spinning the drive. Additionally the fan is always running and can be very loud. Getting a good external casing can be pricey and at that point its often more economical to just buy a new larger drive. Its something to check into though.
Have you tried SimpleTech externals?
I’ve had no problem with them. I’ve had a 120GB for 5 years or so (used a lot to back up everything regularly) and I have a 500GB that also works well, though I haven’t had it long enough to testify to its reliability. SimpleTech is cheaply priced but very good, IMO. They get high ratings from most users.
You can also buy external casings for internal drives that are really cheap, so even if you dont have the room in your tower to add it to, it is substantially cheaper to just buy an external housing for it, basically making your external into an internal, then back into an external…