Hard Drive Advice Requested

[TRCDROM]

I had a system that had four SATA drives internally and four external Western Digital Elements Drives.

I just built a new computer and decided to boot off of an SSD drive and then put in a new faster SATA hard drive internally. At first I left the four other drives in the computer and then started decided to change this.

I took the four internal drivers that were in the computer and put them in a Mediasonic four drive enclosure. This is hooked up via USB 3.0.

Everything is running perfect (so far)

Now I am thinking about taking the four external Western Digital Elements drives and making getting another Mediasonic enclosure.


The main benefits of moving them to the single case are a single electric plug for all four drives and a single USB (2.0 or 3.0) port on my computer for all four drives. This will either free up USB ports on my computer and/or allowing me to avoid using USB hubs.

The big question is:

Do I open each of the Elements and remove the drives to place them in the Mediasonic enclosure or do I buy four new drives. It will not only cost me the cost of four new drives but I will also have to copy all of the information on these drives to the new one. If I remove the old drives and put them in the new enclosure it will be cheaper and quicker for me to do it.


What is the downside to doing this?

 

[ericloewe]

Theoretically, it should work. However, it may bring one or two problems along:

• USB bottleneck - if the individual drives are USB 2.0 this won't be a problem, but if they're USB 3.0, you may notice a decrease in speed.
• You'll be voiding the warranty on the individual drives
• The individual drives may (it's unlikely, though) refuse to work when removed from their enclosures

 

[LurchFrinky]

The big question is:

Do I open each of the Elements and remove the drives to place them in the Mediasonic enclosure or do I buy four new drives. It will not only cost me the cost of four new drives but I will also have to copy all of the information on these drives to the new one. If I remove the old drives and put them in the new enclosure it will be cheaper and quicker for me to do it.

First things first - you need a backup.
Assuming everything plays nice together, there is still a not-insignificant risk that one of the drives could just react badly to the move.
If you already have a backup of the data, then it is perfectly acceptable to go the "cheaper and quicker" route. If you have enough free space to shift data around, then you could try moving one drive at a time and verify everything works at each stage. The safest route by far would be to buy new drives and copy all of the data over.
The first suggestion is fastest and cheapest with the highest risk.
The next suggestion is the slowest and cheapest with much reduced risk (you could still lose a drive, but no data).
The last suggestion isn't the fastest or slowest, but costs the most and has the lowest risk.
It all depends on what factors you think are important.