Internal Hard Drives vs External Enclosure

Brucex64 · 1 Week Ago

I am reaching the point where I need a solution for more hard drive space. Problem is, I have a small form factor case and more than 1 drive is not going to be an easy fit. When I urgently needed space I took some old 3.5" drives and shoved them in...they can't screw into the hd cage because the wires at the back are up against other components. Its a mess in there, but somehow they all work. Those are older 500gb but I need to replace with more 2-4tb new drives.

My only option for internal install is to buy a new bigger case and I don't like a lot of the styles on the market, plus it might be too tall for the cutout in my desk. But there are external enclosures that can hold 4 or 5 drives and sit on the desk, and connect via usb 3.0. My question is, which is a better option? Is data transfer via usb3 going to be a lot slower than the current SATA? And reliability...will the drives last as long in the external housing? **I'm not talking about using external for the o/s drive. Windows has its own NVME drive inside the computer. The externals would be only for data accessing, photos, video, etc. If I connect one of those, will Windows see it as only 1 USB device or will the drives inside of it be listed separately under "this pc"?

Ghot · 1 Week Ago

@Brucex64

Personally... I would just get a bigger internal drive... like an 8TB Western Digital Black.

These days external drives are almost as fast as internals.
But... with externals, there's more parts involved, more things to break.

I don't know what your budget is but have a look at this...

Western Digital WD_BLACK 8 TB 3.5" 7200 RPM Internal Hard Drive (WD8002FZWX) - PCPartPicker

Western Digital Gold 16 TB 3.5" 7200 RPM Internal Hard Drive (WD161KRYZ) - PCPartPicker

Choose External Storage - PCPartPicker <---- Ext. HDDs

Choose External Storage - PCPartPicker <---- Ext. SSDs

Decent, multiple bay external enclosures, aren't cheap.

And here's some MicroATX mid tower cases...

Choose A Case - PCPartPicker

It's probably just superstition, but I always get HDDs or SSDs, that are powers of two.
Like... 1TB, 2TB, 4TB, 8TB, 16TB, etc...

As we all know... computers LIKE powers of two.

Internal Hard Drives vs External Enclosure-image1.png

As you can see... I practice what I preach...

Internal Hard Drives vs External Enclosure-000000-disk-management.png

Internal Hard Drives vs External Enclosure-00000-hard-drives.png

Brucex64 · 1 Week Ago

What do you think about this for external drives?
SYBA SY-ENC50104 4 Bay 3.5" SATA III HDD NON-RAID Enclosure – Supports USB 3.0 & eSATA Interface - Newegg.com

Ghot · 1 Week Ago

Brucex64 said:

What do you think about this for external drives?
SYBA SY-ENC50104 4 Bay 3.5" SATA III HDD NON-RAID Enclosure – Supports USB 3.0 & eSATA Interface - Newegg.com

I'm not a big fan of external enclosures. Too many parts to break.

These are the companies that have been making these things.... forever...

Just a moment...

And here's a 4TB externaL SSD that will fit in your pocket...

Crucial X6 4 TB External SSD (CT4000X6SSD9) - PCPartPicker

Amazon.com <---- see the reviews

Crucial X6 4TB Portable SSD - Up to 800 MB/s - USB 3.2 - External Solid State Drive, USB-C - CT4000X6SSD9 - Newegg.com

Warranty: 3 years parts and labor

Just a bit bigger than a laptop touch pad.
2.7 x 2.5 inches.

Sealed deck of cards - Poker Size 3.5 x 2.5 inches

Ghot · 1 Week Ago

With an external enclosure, you have the internal connectors, the power and data cables.
If you drop it or knock it off the computer desk... the drives are dead.

With a solid state external drive,
You have one cable, and you could probably throw it across the room and it would survive.
You need to figure the cost over time between external HDD enclosure and an external SSD.

Plus... with an external SSD, you can stick it in your pocket when you go to a friend's or other family member's house.

Brucex64 · 1 Week Ago

Yeah, I really don't know what to do. I've been thinking about it for a long time. There's a height consideration for a taller case, and few cases today are sold with optical drive bays - I don't want to give up my internal dvd drive. Plus I think a lot of the new ones are just ugly. These external ones look nice, but in watching some of the reviews there's going to be extra fan noise so that might be a drawback. I'm ok with it being in a spot where it would be hard to knock over. As for SSD vs HDD, I could buy 2 4tb drives for the price of one 4tb SSD. so there are so many choices and options here.

Ghot · 1 Week Ago

Brucex64 said:

Yeah, I really don't know what to do. I've been thinking about it for a long time. There's a height consideration for a taller case, and few cases today are sold with optical drive bays - I don't want to give up my internal dvd drive. Plus I think a lot of the new ones are just ugly. These external ones look nice, but in watching some of the reviews there's going to be extra fan noise so that might be a drawback. I'm ok with it being in a spot where it would be hard to knock over. As for SSD vs HDD, I could buy 2 4tb drives for the price of one 4tb SSD. so there are so many choices and options here.

PCPartpicker is a wonderful site.

On the left side you can add filters to your heart's content.
One of the filters you can add will sort for cases that DO have 5.25" bays (aka optical drive bays).

Brucex64 · 1 Week Ago

This one has 3 internal drive bays. I could probably use one of those 5.25 bays to hold another drive if I needed to. My motherboard is a smaller format so I think there would be more space between it and drives in this case:
Just a moment...

If I'm going to go that route I need to think for future expansion and have room for more than just two drives.

Ghot · 1 Week Ago

Brucex64 said:

This one has 3 internal drive bays. I could probably use one of those 5.25 bays to hold another drive if I needed to. My motherboard is a smaller format so I think there would be more space between it and drives in this case:
Just a moment...

If I'm going to go that route I need to think for future expansion and have room for more than just two drives.

They sell 5.25" to 3.5" adapters too.

https://www.newegg.com/p/pl?d=5.25%2....5%22+adapters

Keep in mind, that your motherboard only has... 4 x SATA3 6.0Gb/s connectors

But... they also sell PCIe to SATA cards.

https://www.newegg.com/p/pl?d=PCIe+SATA+cards

JLArranz · 1 Week Ago

What about this case? I think myself it's stylish (I had kind of the same problem 2-3 years ago, although I live in Spain and I needed a "classic midtower" for full ATX size instead). Does it improve what you have? It has an additional 5.25" bay and there're adaptors for mounting internal drives there. I just searched in newegg for "case" and it wasn't too down, although there're filtering options at the left (and I don't have the least problem with non power of two sizes, if at all with "1 1/2 platters" and such; as I have never used drives over 1TB I haven't had to research about PMR vs shingled and such).

Fractal Design Core 1100, Black, Micro ATX, Mini Tower, Computer Case - Newegg.com