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Question Regarding Laptop Hard Drive as an External Storage Device

M

mustard010

Member
Hello!

Is it wise to use a 160 GB laptop hard drive coupled with a USB enclosure (so in essence, the laptop drive is a 160 GB flash drive) as an external storage solution?

Do you think it will be relatively safe to store? What's the advantages / disadvantages than buying an external hard drive?

Thanks!

Carlo
 
I have 4 laptop disks ranging from 120 to 160GBs and I use all of them as externals. I've experienced zero safety problems thus far and it is much cheaper than buying an external drive. The only downside is that these are used drives and as such they are closer to their end of life.
 
Never put your life's work on any one media source, but yeah everyone uses 2.5" externals all the time.
 
Been doing that for years. As I upgrade a laptop drive, the "old" drive gets put in an external case and reformatted.

Technically, that does not make it a "Flash" drive. That term is normally assocated with solid state memory. The drives your question refers to are electro-mechanical, not solid state.
 
It's completely fine and as others have mentioned, if the drive is older, I wouldn't put my precious data on it without having another copy elsewhere. I have several older 2.5" drives used for USB music in car, p0rn, DVD rips, p0rn, etc....

I recommend testing the drive. It'll give you a good idea of it's health. Use the manufacturer's diagnonsis software, the big HDD companies provide them online. If they don't just do the short and long SMART tests.
 
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