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Convert USB thumb drive to internal HDD?

Forum Storage : Flash Media - Convert USB thumb drive to internal HDD?

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justincranford   07-20-2009 at 04:15:59 PM

Does anyone make an adaptor to convert a USB thumb drive to an internal HDD? I need to replace my laptop's dead hdd (40GB 2.5" 44-pin ide). Rather than get a new 2.5" hdd, I want like to plug a 32GB or 64GB usb 2.0 thumb drive into my laptop's hdd bay instead.

The right USB 2.0 thumb drive can be cheaper, smaller, faster (max 60MB/s), quicker (low latency), cooler, and less power hungry than laptop hdds. This could breath some new life into my old laptop.

I really like the idea of easy file transfer too. I could pull it out of the laptop hdd bay and plug it into other computer's USB port to copy files back and forth.

I am sure someone else has thought of this before. I can't be the only one who seems the upside of such an adaptor. There are plenty of adaptors to turn an internal HDD into a USB external drive, so why not the other way around?

Any help would be appreciated.

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rcpratt   07-20-2009 at 05:22:33 PM

Why do you need the adapter? The only advantage, I suppose, would be accidentally unplugging the drive from the USB port while in use. On the other hand, if you wanted to swap files like you said, you'd have to dig into the laptops hard drive bay to get the drive.

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comcoco   09-20-2009 at 01:41:32 PM

I want the same adaptor for exactly the same reasons. I have found that I can operate my laptop with a dead Hard Drive on an external USB stick provided I remove the hard drive first. This would be fine except that the connection to the USB drive through any of the three external USB ports is erratic and this makes it less portable since even slight movement disrupts the os (ubuntu).

Does anyone know of such an adaptor?

Peter

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Bronze Storage badge sminlal   09-20-2009 at 06:18:44 PM

justincranford wrote :

The right USB 2.0 thumb drive can be cheaper, smaller, faster (max 60MB/s), quicker (low latency), cooler, and less power hungry than laptop hdds. This could breath some new life into my old laptop.

I think you're going to find that a USB flash drive is pretty slow. It does have an advantage of seek time, but the USB protocol itself adds a fair bit of latency and in real devices it tops out at only about 30MB/sec. And a USB flash drive will be even slower, especially for writes, because of the nature of the flash memory. In an SSD there are several flash chips ganged in parallel to achieve good transfer rates, but that's not true of a thumb drive.

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godbrother   09-21-2009 at 09:30:51 PM

Most laptops come with 7,200RPM hard drives. That's alot of speed, compared to somthing that can only read/write at 16MBPS. Which is redicloius. In order to get to the desktop, it will take a good 10 minutes.

Just my advice. Regarding your idea anyway, all you need to do is connect the USB, and select from the bois "Boot from USB Device" and then install windows onto it via the USB. So no need to fiddle around with the bay itself, other then that I don't know.

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