If you are fond of PC modding and upgrades, don’t simply get rid of your old drives, use em!
Today we’re going to walk you through transforming an
old SSD into super speedy, external, portable storage. This is DIY in 5!
Hello everybody! I’m Trisha Hershberger and you are watching DIY in 5,
the show where we help up your tech DIY know how.
Most people think of SSDs as super-fast storage that lives inside your PC or laptop,
or next gen gaming console, but with our devices getting faster and faster,
making sure your external storage can keep up is important.
Good news is, if you happen to have an old internal SSD lying around,
you can save yourself money and repurpose it into
usable external storage, rather than saving your pennies for a new external drive.
Let’s chat external vs internal drives.
As I mentioned earlier, internal drives live inside your computer.
External drives on the other hand, are portable and can travel with you from place to place,
from device to device, and are an easy way to temporarily attach more storage or transfer files wherever and whenever needed.
To transform an internal drive to an external drive, you’ll need to make sure it’s protected from any real-world threats, like dust, dropping etc.
and you’ll need to give it a way to communicate with your various devices, since it will no longer be attached to the innards of your device.
Why SSD? When most people think of external storage, they typically think of external hard drives - traditional HDD drive technology.
While you can find larger capacity storage at a more affordable price point,
this type of storage is slower than SSD storage and is more prone to failing due to a drop or
being tossed around in a bag because of the moving parts within.
SSD storage on the other hand, has no moving parts and works faster, even though it can be more expensive.
This is why turning your gently used internal SSD into an external SSD is such an appealing prospect.
Let’s say you’ve decided to upgrade your rig with a new NVMe SSD and you’ve got your SATA SSD just sitting there feeling lonely.
If you replaced your storage because the old one was faulty,
chances are it probably won’t work any better as external storage.
However, if you updated simply due to speed or capacity, you should be good to go.
The first thing you’ll want to do is to transfer all the data from the old drive to the new drive if you haven’t already.
Be sure to purchase a drive that includes a cloning software kit to make that part of your life a bit easier.
Kingston normally bundles with Acronis software for this very purpose.
Next, you’ll need to get an enclosure to house your storage, both for protection
from outside elements and to help the drive communicate with more traditional external transfer methods like USB.
Some portable enclosures you simply slide the drive in, others use a latch or you use a screwdriver.
There’s specialty enclosures for M.2 SSDs and most come with either USB-A or USB-C connectors.
If your computer supports USB-C and NVMe, be sure to use an NVMe M.2 enclosure for optimum performance.
Check out the video linked in the description for a
step by step guide if you need help installing your internal drive into an external enclosure.
After it’s all set to go, you’ll want to erase the data on the old drive either by deleting
the old files or reformatting the drive.
Again, if you want a step-by-step guide on how to reformat an SSD,
we’ve got a video on that too that you can check out linked in the description. Now you’re good to go!
I personally love repurposing tech.
As often as I upgrade and tinker with my gadgets, I tend to have quite a bit of stuff lying around
that may not be worth it to sell and I just can’t bear to toss.
So, let us know what tech you’ve got sitting around that you want to repurpose
and maybe we’ll put together a future DIY in 5 video just for you.
Alright thanks for watching everyone and I’ll see you next time. Bye!