Tech

How to Make Your Own External HDD For Under $20

2019-02-23 , 10:00 pm

Last Updated on 2020-11-16 , 11:03 am

If you have an old laptop that died on you, or if you don’t wish to use it anymore, you might want to check this out.

If you’re like us, you’ll be too paranoid to sell your laptop away because you won’t know what people can dig out from the laptop, despite the fact that you’ve reformatted and deleted everything you can think of.

And you won’t sell it to the garang guni because they’ll sell you based on weight, which according to personal experience is a couple of dollars. No f***ing way, when you’ve bought it for more than a thousand dollars!

Now, are you like us? Paranoid and resigned to leaving it to gather dust in the house?

How about making your own portable hard disk drive (HDD) under $20? And to top it off, you’ll look cool in front of your girlfriend or boyfriend as well.

I kid you not.

Here’s what you have to do. Remove the HDD from your laptop – it’s in the smaller compartment, accessible bottom of your laptop. While it sounds difficult, it’s actually very easy (as manufacturers need to remove it regularly) – just unscrew a few bolts and it’s done.

Do remember to check if your HDD is an old (IDE) or new (SATA) type.

The type of enclosure you need to get depends on your type of HDD. The pins won’t fit if you get the wrong one. You will also need to check the size of your HDD to check if it’s 2.5 or 3.5 inches. The enclosure also comes in different dimensions so don’t forget to check these out and get the right type.

You can easily get an enclosure at $15 from Challenger if you’re a member, or $18 if you’re a non-member.

Do note that when one of our writers went to Challenger, he could only find SATA-HDD enclosures, so if yours is the old version of HDD, you might need to try your luck online at sites like Qoo10 instead.

Once you’ve placed the HDD within the enclosure, it should work as a external storage immediately. Delete everything, including the operating files.

Note that you might be prompted not to delete the files as it might compromise your computer’s operation, but since the files within the external HDD are not within an operating system anymore, it’s pretty safe to delete them.

There you have it, an almost all-new portable hard disk drive which you can now use or give it to a friend or sibling!

In fact, if your enclosure enclosures the entire old HDD (like the one above), it’ll look like a brand new external harddisk. Pretty lit, isn’t it?

Featured Image: Michael Dechev / Shutterstock.com

How to Make Your Own External HDD For Under $20

Watch this for a complete summary of what REALLY happened to Qoo10, and why it's like a K-drama:

Read Also: