Speeding up Slow USB drives by moving them!

[JMThomas]

WARNING: Not for the technically or mechanically challenged!

If you are willing to install your own physical hard drive(s) (e.g. get a screw driver and open up your desktop case and plug in cables), you can speed your USB hard drive up a lot! This procedure is similar to one many people will attempt when they buy a 2nd hard drive kit with drive/cable/install CD from Seagate, Western Digital, etc.

First, disconnect the USB drive cables, open the USB drive case, and remove the hard drive. It is probably a regular 3.5" hard drive, just like the one in your desktop.

Second, power down your desktop, open the case, and plug in the hard drive, as if you were added a new 2nd hard drive.

Third, run RMF on the desktop. Note that Windows will find the new hard drive when you first boot up, and if there are partitions on it, Windows Explorer will show additional drive letters for them.

Fourth, power down and remove the HD from the desktop and return it to the USB case.

If you have a small USB case you may find that the drive is a 2.5" drive. It too is standard. You can buy an adapter to connect it as a 3.5" drive. The difference in the connection is that the pin spacing on the 2.5" drive is closer, and additional pins are added to carry power. The adapter card just provides the correct size connectors on each end plus a power plug to deliver power to the 2.5" drive.

2.5" drives with ribbon cables default to "master drive" and you must add a jumper to make it the "slave drive" if you add it to a cable with an existing drive. Google (or visit) the manufacturer's web site for pictures of how the jumper goes. All 2.5" drives are the same; a picture of a Maxtor drive will work for a Hitachi drive, etc.

An alternative is to disconnect the master (or only) CD drive from the 2nd cable and connect the 2.5" in its place. This will avoid the need to re-jumper the drive and may speed up the saving of files (a bit) by overlapping the IO between the 2.5" and the drive where you are saving the recovered files.

New systems are switching over to a Serial ATA connection. If you find your drive is SATA, it will not have any pins. There are two edge connectors, one for power and a narrow one for signal. These drives can move from any SATA machine to any other SATA machine without problems. Note that each drive has its own thin signal cable and the computer motherboard/controller card has separate connectors for each SATA drive. Your desktop computer will have to support SATA drives and you may need to buy an additional SATA cable.

The same trick can be done with a laptop. Move the 2.5" drive from the laptop to a desktop, and then you can save the recovered files on another hard disk. Very useful if your laptop doesn't have a CD burner to save the recovered files with.

DISCLAIMER: You are the only person responsible if things go wrong. If you bend pins, drop the drive, hook things up backwards, create more file system damage, or have any other problem, no one -- not the drive or computer manufacture, any software company (like GetData), or the givers of advice (like myself) will accept any blame whatsoever. If you aren't willing to risk doing computer hardware service tasks, get a professional to do it for you.