Skip to main content

How to convert a portable external hard disk into an internal hard disk (Western Digital 500GB)

I have a Western Digital My Book Essential 500GB USB 2.0 3.5" External Hard Drive and it is only used as storage device for my installers in my internet cafe. I have them in a portable hard disk so that it would be easy to install them in many computers.

I am not installing that frequent anymore and the portable hard disk is just sitting pretty inside the box. The time I planned to build an Intel Quad Core PC, I decided not to buy a new hard drive and just use the portable hard drive instead.

The WD My Book contains 500GB of space, which is enough for me, and it runs at 7200rpm with 16MB cache. It is just on SATA II but the capacity and cache will not bottleneck my quad core built. This hard disk would be great for my build and an extra saving for me.

How could you convert it into an internal drive?

If you have a My Book or a portable external hard disk and you are not using it that much, you can actually convert it to an internal disk and boost your desktop storage and even data transfer speed (if you have a much better model).

Remove the outer casing

There are no screws on My Book, so the best way to remove the casing is to use a flat screw and slowly slide the cover out of the inner casing. You might produce scratches on the plastic but it is OK until you do not break anything.

Remove the inner casing

Remove the screws and carefully remove the connector of the SATA and power supply. In My Book, it is a circuit board. After removing anything that is attached to the hard disk, you can now see the plain fat hard disk just like the hard disk you have in your desktop computer.

How to connect it to the desktop computer?

Treat it as an ordinary hard disk and connect it with a SATA cable to the motherboard. You need also an extra SATA power supply cable to power up your hard disk. You might need to reformat the hard disk in order to use it. You must see the new hard disk in your BIOS utility and on Windows Explorer. Be sure the computer recognizes the maximum storage capacity of the disk. If not, go to Computer Management, delete partition, create new volume (use all space), and finally format it. Use Windows 7 to do this in order to get great results.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Only positive comments are accepted. Thanks!

Popular posts from this blog

How to listen to WhatsApp voice message before sending it and read web messages without opening chat

WhatsApp launched a useful feature, which allows you to record a voice message without the need to keep the icon pressed, and in addition, listen to the audio before sending it. At the moment, it is only available for iOS devices (iPhones) and will soon be available for the Android operating system. The audios became one of the main resources to feed conversations on WhatsApp, especially among younger users. But how does this new option work? It is very simple: you have to keep the microphone button located on the right side next to the text field pressed and move it upwards to start recording without the need to keep the icon pressed. When you finish talking, you have to click on contact information (above) and in this way the recording is paused. And then you go back, that is to the field of conversation and you can listen to the audio before sending it. It should be noted that you can continue talking, you just have to do the same, press the button and pull it up again. ...
Post a Comment
Read more

How to Play CrossFire Philippines like a Pro (Tutorial with video)

CrossFire Philippines is an online first person shooting game which resembles the old CounterStrike. However, this online game has lots of purchasable items and you can create a character or an account which will increase in rank every time you play. Missions and Clan Wars are also key parts of this game in which players could play up to 8 versus 8 persons divided in two teams – blacklist and global risks. SmileGate developed the game from Korea which is known to be a great developer of this sort of games. Neowiz made it available around the globe and Gameclub published it here in the Philippines. This game became very famous and attractive to online gamers because of its graphics quality (realistic environment and effects) and the creation of personal accounts. I believe lots of young ones in the country are getting addicted with this game. What I really love with this game is the ranking. I am now a “Captain” in this game and it always makes me feel good to increase my leve...
Post a Comment
Read more

How to easily repair your PC after a lag or an application error

I have an application that saves lots of files on my temporary files folder and I also love installing different kinds of software whenever something interests me. Sometimes I forgot to clean my temporary files folder. And, sometimes I just uninstall software that doesn’t pass my preference. Having these things happening inside my computer, it costs me a lag, delay, slow speed, and errors from time to time. It would be very easy to fix these things if you know exactly what’s wrong or what application is involved in the problem. But, when things go mixed-up and you are brought to a side where you forgot what you have done to your PC, you really need a tool to sort this thing out. This problem is very common to all who have applications that stores a lot of temporary data to your PC like browsers and even games. Installation and uninstallation of programs could also cause some registry problems. The biggest problem is when you experienced a lag or an application error and you have ...
Post a Comment
Read more