Hacking Died Portable HDD to Read Data and Use It As Internal HDD

Intro: Hacking Died Portable HDD to Read Data and Use It As Internal HDD

How does it feel to find your external HDD which was working fine until last night works no more.. ??

You're reduced to a numb with only your internal HDD to store for its meager space ??

You no-longer are able to read anything and extract any data from your HDD for you hardly cared to doube back-up your back-up portable HDD :P

well it all happened im my case. WIth not even a hint of scratch or mis-use let alone abusing it mechanically with shocks.

The frustration ensued had driven me mad to the franatic search i did to recovery softwares.. analyzing for any clicking sounds while running.. or even those taxing visits to the service centers who gave no heed to my plead to save the data and even failed to read the problem in the first place declared its dead and i may have to get a new one (not your datas ofcourse :( )

Thatz when i had decided to throw it into my junkie bins and thought of prying it out myself before doing away with it for eternity. To my utter surprise it had very few parts and i was able to recover all my datas and am able and still using the HDD with a lil bit of sacrifice on the mobility though. which wasn't a problem for me as i had been always using it to store movies and datas of sorts on a daily basis and it sort-of came in handy that no more loose wires dangling from the usb ports and it all gonna be concealed inside the CPU

STEP 1: Collect Your Items

- Deceased Portable HDD (Transcend storejet 500 in my case)

- Screw- Driver (Both star & flat tipped for prying)

- SATA Power supply Cable

- SATA Data cable

- Some CPU Mounting screws for those mounting racks

STEP 2: Pry It Out... Take Apart..

Now having acquired all those items.. just do it...

Unscrew the only star screw behind those stickers and pry open the top lid using the flat faced screw drivers.

NOTE: It might demand some effort to separate the lids for it would've been made of press-fitted plastics which may not be re-usable if you damage it physically

You should see the real prize inside in the form of a miniature HDD which is originally SATA.. Now remove all parts and take apart for the real Magic to follow..

Unplug the SATA to usb PCB from the fixture and remove the bumper case as shown in the picture

STEP 3: Putting All Pieces Together...

Now its time for the Real Magic..

Push those SATA power supply cables and data cables in the Mini-HDD Gently for it'll be too flimsy to be damaged easily with all that we've done thus far..

put the other end to the spare plugs coming out from the SMPS and to the other SATA slots in the Motherboard

You could see my CPU with dusted P5GCMX with a makeshift arrangement to accomodate the HDD. Which i had clamped in the ATX Rack later with some tweaks to hold in those screws. You are free to do it with your own imagination or let it rested in the bottom if you dont mind and you won't keep disturbing your CPU often.

Now its the TADA moment.. Just switch on the PC to see it gets auto-detected and displayed in the BIOS screen if you care to see or just boot whatever OS you have and take-out all your datas and still keep using the same HDD.

Comments

[Cekpi7]

Or you can buy 2.5 inch external HDD case and install your 2.5in HDD

[chuppandi]

Good idea.. in that case we'll either need an external power supply or if its gonna be taking the power from SMPS we gotta tweak that as well..

[Cekpi7]

2.5in can be USB powered but 3.5in would need external psu or you can connect it to pc psu

[sgamil]

I didn't knew that any portable HDD is made from laptop HDD, it is really cool!

thanks!

[Geeks with lasers]

Some of the older ones that need a separate power supply are even made from a bog standard desktop hard disk...

Its quite handy for recovery if the usb connector dies...

[chuppandi]

Yep.. very true

And they always terrorize you asking if there is a click sound.. probably your HDD is stuck in a sector...

[Geeks with lasers]

Indeed, clicking and bouncing of hard disks is the most scary thing any IT professional can faith.

[Geeks with lasers]

Indeed, clicking and bouncing of hard disks is the most scary thing any IT professional can faith.

[muddog15]

Good for dual boot computers. One dedicated hard drive for Linux!

[chuppandi]

Ha ha.. you must b one of those Linux freaks like me.. :P