Making your own External Hard Drive

By : Indra Zakki

You can make more free space on your disk by using External Hard Drive. The way is by backing up some of your data from your Hard Disk to your External Hard Drive. External Hard Drive is very useful.

But if you do not have much money to buy External Hard Drive, you can use this trick. The trick is you can use Internal Hard drive as an External Hard Drive by using drives enclosure.

Hard Drive enclosure is very cheap. To make External Hard Drive enclosure is very easy, fast and do not need a lot of work.

You can use your old hard drives to make External Hard Drive enclosure. By using Hard Drive enclosure you can meet you needs like style, connection and capacity that meet you needs.

If you are confused about the cost, you can compare the price, how much Internal Hard Drive and Hard Drive enclosure with External Hard Drive. You will see how big the different.

Internal Hard Drive

Before you build an External Hard Drive enclosure first you must choose what kind of Internal Hard Drive that you will use. There are 3 kind of Internal Hard Drive that is 1.8”, 2.5” and 3.5” Hard Drive. I think you must use 3.5” Hard Drive because it’s cheaper than 1.8” and 2.5’ Hard Drive. And 3.5” Hard Drive commonly have bigger capacity than 1.8” and 2.5’ Hard Drive. Don’t worry about the power for 3.5” Hard Drive, because the Hard Drive enclosure will provide it.

500gb USB 2.0

Connection at end

Right now there are two kind of connection at end. The connections are IDE (Integrated Drive Electronics) and SATA (Serial Advanced Technology Attachment) or maybe eSATA. IDE connection technology is older than SATA technology. But IDE is cheaper than SATA. The different between IDE and SATA connection is in the speed of data transfer, which is SATA is faster than IDE. What you need to know about Hard Drive enclosure is that Hard Drive enclosure using USB 2.0, so data transfer will be slower when passed USB cable.

To Cooling The Hard Drive

Because the Hard Drive is placed in the enclosure, the Hard Drive will be easily getting heat. So to reduce the heat use enclosure case that made from aluminum, because the aluminum easy to cool so aluminum can be a heat sink for the Hard Drive. But if you buy enclosure case that made form plastic you must choose enclosure that has a fan to cool the Hard Drive.

Enclosure Connection

Choose connection that fit with you computer. There are two kind of connection that is USB 2.0 and FireWire. Firewire is more expensive than USB 2.0.

Assembling

If you have all the needs for building External Hard Drive enclosure, now you are in the step of building External Hard Drive enclosure. As I tell you in the first, building External Hard Drive enclosure is very easy, all you have to do are:

-         Set the jumper of the Hard Drive to master. If you don’t know see the instruction how to setting jumper in the Hard Drive. But if you still don’t know, you must consult to the experts.

-         Put the Hard Drive in to the case enclosure.

-         Plug the internal data cable and the power cable from the enclosure to the Hard Drive.

-         When is done, close the case and plug the External USB and power cable.

-         If you are using the latest OS, you will not need to install the enclosure driver. The OS will detect the enclosure automatically. If not you install the driver to your computer.

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