Reddit mentions of AmazonBasics 3.5-inches SATA HDD Hard Drive Enclosure - USB 3.0

Get a cheap hard drive enclosure like this one and connect it via USB.
Edit: just saw that you said it was external; if it's already in an enclosure (that's got a sata connector instead of USB for some reason) you could get a sata-to-usb converter like this one if you don't want to take the hard drive out of whatever it's already in.

Your best bet may be to buy a drive and an enclosure instead. 2tb is pretty small nowdays and so is usually a 2.5" as far as I know. By buying an enclosure you can use it for other external drives later too. Note, that 3.5" drives almost always require external power so be sure to budget the space for the power supply.


An example Amazon Basics enclosure:
https://www.amazon.com/AmazonBasics-3-5-inches-SATA-Drive-Enclosure/dp/B01MZC303G/

Would this be worth pairing with a hard drive enclosure to work as an XB1 hard drive?

Looks like with the $5 discount and the the enclosure, it would total $70 before tax. So it would be 7,200 RPMs speed using this bulkier setup vs. $86 for a 5,400 Game Drive that has the same storage capacity. I have no idea if it would need some type of formatting or would be plug and play though. But a cheaper price and better performance along with a free PC game is hard to pass up.

Hmm it might be able to, but if it does it'll be very tight. I don't have a 3.5" drive around to test unfortunately.

Edit: Worst comes to worst you can get one of these external enclosures for your hdd.

apart from the sata to usb, you will need an external power supply. Usb does not provide enough power for those hdds. if you are planing on keeping it as a permanent secondary drive, i suggest you buy a case for it. or a sata to usb with additional power supply.

What do you mean by SATA enclosure? SATA enclosures are like this. Unless you mean HDD drive bay?

Something like this would work https://www.amazon.com/AmazonBasics-3-5-inches-SATA-Drive-Enclosure/dp/B01MZC303G/ref=mp_s_a_1_4?keywords=hdd+enclosure&qid=1557002480&s=gateway&sr=8-4

To try and be helpful, you can remove the hard drive from the laptop and place it in to a hard drive enclosure and pull any and all files off of it that way. It will take you 30 minutes (search youtube the make and model of your laptop + the words hard drive removal) MAX.

Then all you would need is something like this: https://www.amazon.com/AmazonBasics-3-5-inches-SATA-Drive-Enclosure/dp/B01MZC303G/

Any computer store can take care of this for likely less than $100. Do not take it to Best buy. But honestly, if you can use a screw driver, you can remove the hard drive.

Hope all turns out OK in the end for you guys.

you can with something like this (doesn't need to be this exact one)

Rather then cloning, I'd suggest just starting from scratch. You can stick your old hard drive into a usb-enclosure and still have access to your files.

Starting from scratch means you get a clean slate - any random old issues your computer had don't get moved over to the new hard drive.

What specs are you looking for? This is a 500gb drive with a 16mb cache that can run at 7200RPM. It's read and write speeds are that of a run-of-the-mill mechanical hard drive. This is basically a drive you would use for a basic computer setup, an addon to an SSD setup, or as a backup drive. If you bought this drive used, then there's a possibility it could be slower than when brand new.

If you want to use it without plugging into your pc using the SATA ports on your motherboard, then you can by a dock or hard drive enclosure that you will be able to plug into your computer via USB.

Here is an example of a dock you can use:
https://www.amazon.com/Sabrent-External-Docking-Station-DS-UBLK/dp/B00IKAQ538

Here is an example of an enclosure:
https://www.amazon.com/AmazonBasics-3-5-inches-SATA-Drive-Enclosure/dp/B01MZC303G

Yeah your best bet would be a 3.5" hard drive enclosure with external power supply. Something like this. That's just the easiest one I could find, but they're available from places like Best Buy too, and countless other places online and off, as they're a common, inexpensive part.

You’ll need a SATA 3.5” to USB caddy/enclosure like this one from Amazon.
If you have a 2016 or later MacBook Pro you’ll also need a USB-C to USB-A adapter for the caddy I linked.

In my opinion I think you best option is to buy another hard drive, at least 500GB or more. The SMART errors, the fact that the drive was locked and the fact that the laptop all point to the drive being in a really bad state and that you should probably buy another drive.

Now looking at the specs it says the drive is a 500GB SATA drive, so if you want to, you can connect the drive to a desktop PC, but I don't think this is really important unless there are files you want to get back from the laptop hard drive.

Now worst case scenario, I am wrong about the drive and you have already bought the new laptop drive, then just use the new drive and buy a USB enclosure and use the used drive like an external drive.

Better idea, don't replace the internal. It's more work than necessary, a pain in the ass and limits future expansion.

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Buy a cheap hard drive enclosure (2.5" laptop size or 3.5" desktop size) off amazon then buy a 2.5" or 3.5" 2TB hard drive to go in it, and use it as an external storage on the Ps4. USB has a speed limit cap so going faster isn't necessarily worth the $$ difference.

https://www.amazon.com/AmazonBasics-3-5-inches-SATA-Drive-Enclosure/dp/B01MZC303G

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https://www.amazon.com/Seagate-BarraCuda-Cache-Desktop-ST2000DM006/dp/B01IEKG402/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1537990998&sr=8-3&keywords=3.5%22+2TB+hard

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https://www.amazon.com/WD-Blue-2TB-Hard-Drive/dp/B013QFRS2S/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1537990998&sr=8-5&keywords=3.5%22+2TB+hard

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Brands don't have to be the same, just get a reputable brand off amazon.

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A normal will do, don't worry about SSD for external because the difference is negligible and SSD would be super expensive for a 1TB or higher

As I posted above, these converters are more for quick data transfer. If you want to turn 3.5 inch drives into external drives long term you would want some sort of drive enclosure.

AmazonBasics 3.5-inches SATA Hard Drive Enclosure - USB 3.0 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01MZC303G/

You can get an external hard drive enclosure.
Like this.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01MZC303G/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_uIk5BbQX04VYZ

https://www.amazon.com/AmazonBasics-3-5-inches-SATA-Drive-Enclosure/dp/B01MZC303G

https://www.amazon.com/AmazonBasics-3-5-inches-SATA-Drive-Enclosure/dp/B01MZC303G/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1523032632&sr=8-1&keywords=3.5+powered+enclosure

Negative, what you do is then install Windows 10 from a USB to THAT SSD then reinstall what you want from Steam or what have you. Pull the old Hard Drive out so that you don't fuck up and accidently reinstall windows and possibly lose everything. If you do that of course.

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If you had a HDD Cloning solution, a Kangaroo Hard Drive Cloner or something Similar, you could easily bring things over. (No guarantee things would function properly, but you could do it.) The drives must be the same size or larger.

There are plenty of solutions for the hardrive cloning, not too expensive to be honest. Though maybe a bit much if you are only doing it this once? Up to you.

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I personally would just install windows onto the SSD, plug the Old HDD into an External Hard Drive enclosure, that you then use to pull off your important stuff and then place on the SSD. BE ADVISED, you don't want to completely fill up the SSD, it greatly reduces the lifespan of the equipment.


Use the HDD as a storage solution for larger games or things you can wait the extra couple of seconds to load. Windows lets you designate different drives/locations in your computer for applications, documents, the desktop, videos, pictures, everything. You just need to go about setting them up as much.

Hey,

> I also have an unused 3.5" 2TB HD I can install as long as the laptop has the space/option for it - having this is a key element

You won't find any laptop with space for this - that's a desktop HDD and newer laptops are very compact. If you still want to use this for storage I'd recommend using it as external storage - combined with this: Enclosure.

My big question here: do you need a display with good color coverage or any LED IPS display would do.

This could be an option: Acer Aspire E5-576G - has a decent display with 80% color coverage, quad-core processor, SSD and room for an HDD, 2 memory slots, ~5H battery life, a decent peripheral port selection: 1 X USB 2.0, 1 X USB-C 3.1, 2 X USB 3.0, 1 X LAN, SD card reader and a backlit keyboard.

Or, if you need more power, I'd recommend the Dell Gaming G3 15 3579 - H series processor, GTX 1050 and a crappy display (biggest drawback) - it's 650$ on their official site.

But, if you don't like my recommendations, maybe you can use our search engine to find something more suitable for your needs.

You can see and change the search parameters using the "Refine results" button in the upper-left part of the search results page. You can also click on the laptops for more information.

Hope I helped!

Honestly, your best bet as far as effectiveness and cost is to buy an external hard drive (or an internal drive hooked up to a SATA-to-USB housing such as this) and either using Backup and Restore from the Control Panel or buying a program like NovaBackup PC or Acronis True Image (both are $49.95 MSRP) and running that every so often. Just be sure to remove the external drive from your PC after every backup to keep it physically isolated from the rest of your system.

Yes it's less convenient than a service like Backblaze but it also gives you complete control over system backups and will be a hell of a lot more valuable in the long run next time you have a boot device fail on you.

We use these at work for our surveillance.

For home use you can pair with this or this

Something like this.
AmazonBasics 3.5-inches SATA Hard Drive Enclosure - USB 3.0 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01MZC303G/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_.7xUBbP0CVVKK

Allows you to not have to worry about going into the BIOS and switching boot priority. Again also allows you to easily wipe the old drive without having to figure out which is which.

Get a regular 7200rpm HDD. It's not worth the massive price difference for maybe 5 seconds quicker loading and 0 performance increase.

https://www.amazon.com/AmazonBasics-3-5-inches-SATA-Drive-Enclosure/dp/B01MZC303G/ref=sr_1_3?crid=1R8W7O7UT1WUX&keywords=3.5+hdd+enclosure+usb+3.0&qid=1556499254&s=gateway&sprefix=3.5+hdd+e%2Caps%2C126&sr=8-3l

https://www.amazon.com/Blue-Cache-Desktop-Drive-WD10EZEX/dp/B0088PUEPK/ref=sr_1_3?keywords=1tb+hdd+7200rpm&qid=1556499237&s=gateway&sr=8-3