Thread: How to use an Internal SSD externally via a caddy etc?

My son uses one of these.
USB 3.0 Docking Station with LID for 2.5" and 3.5" SATA Drive- black colour | eBay

but he is constantly covering/testing/hacking drives so it's not exactly a caddy.

I also saw this on ebay which looks interesting
Dual 2.5" 3.5" SATA IDE HDD Docking Station Hard Disk Drive Dock OTB Card Reader 788537801146 | eBay

The both come with AC power cables so must have some sort of AC to loV electronics.

I believe that your second link should do the job for you, including powering the drive. The SSD should not draw much power from the USB connector, I used to run 500GB 2.5 in regular laptop drives of USB 2 with just the USB cable for data and power.

Those cases you linked to are basically what I have used for my backup SSD drive but mine is not 4TB.

C97FD899-113F-475E-8B80-EAE3D7003419.jpegB113F8DC-20D3-4F28-A90B-9ABAF0EB7AD3.jpg

Thanks chaps.

Originally Posted by malb

I believe that your second link should do the job for you, including powering the drive. The SSD should not draw much power from the USB connector, I used to run 500GB 2.5 in regular laptop drives of USB 2 with just the USB cable for data and power.

I assume that means the first link is also probably ok, but that your are just not as certain? (the second one actually shows a Samsung SSD being used....)

I would think all would work. The 'clone' station has the extra capability to copy your drive without your computer; potentially a useful tool to make a backup fairly quickly.

SSD's are meant to be written once (or very few times) but read many, and are therefore unsuitable as an external drive to store information that is written over many times.

You can try to set the cache to on for an external drive, which may leave the drive on for longer.
To set the cache on.

1. Right-click My Computer, and then click Properties.
2. Click the Hardware tab, and then click Device Manager.
3. Expand Disk Drives.
4. Right-click the drive on which you want to turn disk write caching on or off, and then click Properties.
5. Click the Policies tab.

The above was from google. You may play around with the write-cache policy.

Thanks. I always have cache writing enabled on external drives - it works wonderfully for writes of about 5GB or less - quick as anything. This SSD will only be written to minimally, but read many times.

Interesting to note that the Samsung guarantee is for (IIRC) 2500TB writes on one of the EVO/QVO drives which I think might have been a 2TB drive, so 1000 complete writes - that's pretty good.

I had my external drive plugged in for the last 48 hours on my desktop and I could access the external drive without delay during that time. I think that is because I set my sleep setting to never.

I strongly suspect that that is drive dependent. When I have the USB powered WD HDD drives in, they don't spin down, but the desk top one (240v with a wall wart) spins down far too quickly. This is actually bad for it because they do not like to be stop/started too much as it wears them out. Actually better off to keep spinning.

So I eventually went with the Samsung QVO 4TB SSD for $616 (after a cashback of $73) and a StarTech USB 3.1 Enclosure for $80 which is about $50 more than I had planned to spend on the enclosure. I got some pretty good Tech support from M-Wave (who actually tried to talk me out of buying a new SSD for a while). He said:
"The AsMedia ASM1351 bridge chip in the StarTech S251BMU313 I previously recommended supports both UASP and TRIM to enable greater performance in SSDs and maintain that performance. It has also been independently tested and found to offer better than average performance, although power consumption is slightly higher than most alternatives."

A word from the weary: don't even bother with a purchase from CentreCom.com.au - I found their service to be beyond hopeless. Ridiculous phone systems that hang up on you (3 times, so no quirk) when you press option 6 "Speak to an online specialist" and staff who clearly don't give a hoot.

Originally Posted by justonething

SSD's are meant to be written once (or very few times) but read many, and are therefore unsuitable as an external drive to store information that is written over many times.

Really? - my laptop has a 1TB SSD and is being written to multiple times a day. Is there a difference between internal and external SSDs?

Er... No...
See SSD Lifespan: How Long Will Your SSD Work? for example.
A current 4tb samsung ssd is specified to write the entire drive (4tb) 600 times. That's a lot of writes. 400 DVDs worth every day for 20 months.

Originally Posted by russ57

Er... No...
See SSD Lifespan: How Long Will Your SSD Work? for example.
A current 4tb samsung ssd is specified to write the entire drive (4tb) 600 times. That's a lot of writes. 400 DVDs worth every day for 20 months.

Yep, that's why we have them....

And they don't get hot.

And they're silent.

And they're ultra reliable.

And they're blisteringly fast.