Sabrent USB 3.0 to SATA I/II/III Dual Bay External Hard Drive Docking Station for 2.5 or 3.5in HDD, SSD with Hard Drive Duplicator/Cloner Function [10TB Support] (EC-HD2B)

The Shield pro 500gb model has a SSHD drive that's prone to failure, this drive isn't recognized by windows and if it goes dead you've basically got a paperweight. People found that if you take a closer you can essential clone this to a SSD of the same size and enjoy much faster boot times and reliability. They have tutorials on how to open the unit and a cloner like this should do the job

Sabrent USB 3.0 to SATA I/II/III Dual Bay External Hard Drive Docking Station for 2.5 or 3.5in HDD, SSD with Hard Drive Duplicator/Cloner Function [10TB Support] (EC-HD2B) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0759567JT/ref=cm_sw_r_u_apa_fab_QxpFFb3BY34B6

Nah you can just dock the SSD just like this

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0759567JT

I'm not an expert, but i'm 95% sure it would be fine. If you want to be absolutely positive that it will be fine, you could back it up to a new hard drive using one of these.

I bought this to move/clone/see the files

Sabrent USB 3.0 to SATA I/II/III Dual Bay External Hard Drive Docking Station for 2.5 or 3.5in HDD, SSD with Hard Drive Duplicator/Cloner Function [10TB Support] (EC-HD2B) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0759567JT/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_C3SOEbC0EFJ0D

Does it slow down games if you run them off an SSD connected via USB? I have this dock and I was wondering if I can just plug it into my PS4 and load games onto a drive to play.

You can purchase a SATA to USB-A cable that would allow you to connect a HDD externally. Really, the problem though is you will have a HDD that should be mounted that is not, and the vibrations of it spinning up not mounted could damage it.

However, you could also buy an external hard drive bay, that would most likely be a perfect solution for you.

Something like this.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0759567JT/ref=cm_sw_r_other_apa_i_c90MEbQ9TYCED

A USB sata adapter or dock like this https://www.amazon.com/Sabrent-External-Duplicator-Function-EC-HD2B/dp/B0759567JT/ref=mp_s_a_1_14?dchild=1&keywords=usb+sata&qid=1590940875&sr=8-14

You will need to get the model of the laptop to ensure the right RAM. Any sata 2.5 sata SSD should work just fine. If you want to save the data on it, a drive dock would very helpful in cloning his old mechanical drive to the new SSD. It's also just super handy device to have on hand.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0759567JT/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_j-FNFbTB45Q6Y

I have no experience with this model, just the first one that came up on a Google search.

This is a great post- perfect detail and links for each question. Helps us alot to be able to answer in a helpful way.

Like the other answers I would agree that USB file transfer is less desirable than SATA, but with your use case I don't think it's unreasonable to use a USB dock. I have many internal drives lying around and I don't want them plugged into my computer all the time, so I have a usb dock like this one that I can just drop them in when I need to access something. In my opinion I'd prefer internal drives with one dock versus a bunch of external drives with their extra cables and keeping track of power supplies. PLUS you can just upgrade your dock when you need to upgrade connections, like to USB 3.2 Gen 2 or Thunderbolt.

However, if your backups are substantial and USB is too slow, you might consider mounting them in your computer and just plug them in when you need them.

Your other question about internal versus external drive prices is a bit more complicated. Firstly, it seems like the internal drive you linked to is not sold by Amazon, so the price is not really comparable to the external drive. Secondly, it's doubly incomparable because the "Blue" WD drive is more expensive than ones they usually put in external drives. However, many people usually find it cheaper to "shuck" external drives if they're doing cold storage or RAID arrays. Usually if you're looking for an internal drive you need specific performance, like when I buy Toshiba x300 performance drives for my workstation, whereas with the mystery box of an enclosure you can't guarantee that you're going to get the drive you need.

It's up to you how to proceed, if you find a good deal on external drives and want to shuck them to put in an dock, great! You can't really go wrong. But whatever you do, be careful with drives when you're moving them around or unplugging them frequently!

Over a 100 megabit fiber link, uploading 4 TB will take four and a half days, assuming you can max it the connection out continuously.

There are dirt cheap SATA-to-USB docking stations that you can plug any normal hard drive into, hot-swap. Buy one of those and a 6TB drive; the 6TB can act as backup of your main data drives when you're not rebuilding the server.

https://www.amazon.com/Sabrent-External-Duplicator-Function-EC-HD2B/dp/B0759567JT for example, this is just one variant, there are others.

Do you mean something like this?

https://www.amazon.com/Sabrent-External-Duplicator-Function-EC-HD2B/dp/B0759567JT/ref=sxin_9?

have you ever tried something like this?

Sabrent USB 3.0 to SATA I/II/III... https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0759567JT?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_share

This is the model I have and it works great even with drives that fail to open in windows

Is the hard drive physically failing or just running excruciatingly slow? You've already put what is probably a good chunk of hours into this, I would say your easiest route would be to buy a dual bay docking station with a cloning feature.

If the drive is physically failing (audible, distinct clicking usually), I would just worry about backing up the data as soon as possible.

Here is an affordable docking station: Sabrent with cloning. The destination drive just has to be the same size or larger for the clone feature to work.

Edit: with the docking bay all you have to do is pull the old drive out pop it in slot one, pop the new terabyte drive and sloy two and press and hold the clone button until it starts. When it's done just put the new drive into the computer and boot up like normal. Nothing else to do.

More than likely that adapter is under powered. It might work fine on a SSD but not on a hard drive. I would recommend returning it and getting something like this.

https://www.amazon.com/Sabrent-External-Duplicator-Function-EC-HD2B/dp/B0759567JT/ref=mp_s_a_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=disk+cloning+bay&sr=8-3

This?

Okay.... Here's an idea.....not saying it's a good idea, but an idea...

Pick up a couple of Dual-Drive USB Docks for your old hard drives..

Plug them into one of your computers, boot FreeNAS off a Flash drive... Hopefully it'll pick them up.

At that point, you've got your data.... you can hook the 12TB to the other computer, boot and OS over there, and copy the data over....

Might be able to do it all on a single computer, but I haven't looked into FreeNAS' support for other file systems...

The easiest solution would be to purchase a USB 2.5"/3.5" SATA Hard Drive Dock. It allows you to plug in an internal hard drive which will appear similar to a flash drive and you can just right-click on it and select "Format" (Select NTFS).

Below is the cheaper, not-as-easy solution but will still work:

So when you install Windows 10, make sure the old SSD is the boot drive (and the only hard drive in the computer). The Windows Install Menu will ask you to format the hard drive. Click "Yes". Once formatting finishes and begins copying W10 files, hold the power button to turn off the computer. Remove the old SSD and install the new SSD (keep the old SSD in another SATA port).

Start the computer and install Windows 10 on the NEW SSD.

Once installation is finished, the old SSD will appear as a separate blank drive (kinda' but not really blank).

Probably 3 months too late, but I got this bad boy years ago and I'm glad I did every week when I run file backups. It basically docks 2 hard drives so you can use them alongside the hardware in your computer. Granted, you need hard drives to use it. Every time I have a laptop go bad (or I know someone that is junking theirs), I take out their hard drive and RAM and hold onto it.

If your router has a USB port and is compatible you could just get a cheap enclosure, plug it in, and have one of them set up as a network drive. Maybe a powered dock like (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0759567JT/) could make use of both of them in the same way but I'm not sure.

You could run a server program but having laptops run 24/7 sounds like a massive hassle and a waste of power.

Other than that, if you can't do something cheap, I wouldn't recommend doing much with them. Being laptop drives, they've probably seen a lot of wear from being moved around and are probably generic drives that aren't rated to run constantly in a server. Consider turning the drives into externals or finding a use for the laptops as a whole.

If the SSD is bigger or the same size as the original, you can buy one of those hardware hard drive duplicators. https://www.amazon.com/Sabrent-External-Duplicator-Function-EC-HD2B/dp/B0759567JT/ref=sr_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=hard+drive+clone&qid=1599795173&sr=8-3

I'm assuming this is a standard hard drive with a SATA connector on it. If you're not sure, you can either give the model of the HDD here, or Google it to be sure. SATA is the most commonly used connector, so it's probably uses a SATA connection unless it's really old, or it's not an internal drive.

You'll either need a SATA to USB adapter (like this one https://www.amazon.com/SATA-Drive-Adapter-Converter-Power/dp/B07PVX682Q/), or an external hard drive dock (like this https://www.amazon.com/Sabrent-External-Duplicator-Function-EC-HD2B/dp/B0759567JT) if you've got multiple HDDs that you want to view at once. The dock is good if you need to clone drives and stuff, too, but I'm guessing that's not a huge need for you right now.

In case you're wondering why I asked about the type of computer you're using: if you had a desktop PC, you'd just need to plug it into the motherboard.

sounds like it may be dead. ive had some luck using a HDD/SSD mirror dock (duplicator) to copy drives that weren't booting. but ive also had it not work too. keep in mind if you use this method you have to get a drive thats the exact same size though. https://www.amazon.com/Sabrent-External-Duplicator-Function-EC-HD2B/dp/B0759567JT/ref=asc_df_B0759567JT/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=309743296044&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=6798948985073071251&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9010606&hvtargid=pla-564037935583&psc=1 something like this. obviously no guarantee on it working but its a handy device to have around too as you can alo use it as a dock.

I've never heard of "Megaz" as a hardware provider. Looks like a cheap knock off POS.

You can try opening it up and removing the drive, then use a USB adapter to try to connect to your Mac. Or buy a dock.

Before spending the $$ on the adapter/dock though see if you can test the drive on another machine, plugged into the internal sata port.

Usually the failure point on these externals is the built in usb adapter. Strip the drive out and you have a regular 2.5" laptop drive that's just fine.

Do you need a dock or do you just need to hook up to pull data?

Just for pulling data:

UGREEN SATA to USB 3.0 Adapter Cable for 3.5/2.5 Inch SSD HDD SATA III Hard Drive Disk Converter Support UASP Compatible with Samsung Seagate WD SanDisk Hitachi Toshiba, with 12V Power Adapter https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00MYU0EAU/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_8AWJEbYJZNSXZ

Dock:

Sabrent USB 3.0 to SATA I/II/III Dual Bay External Hard Drive Docking Station for 2.5 or 3.5in HDD, SSD with Hard Drive Duplicator/Cloner Function [10TB Support] (EC-HD2B) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0759567JT/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_OBWJEbVWM6VF2

For short money you could get something like https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0759567JT/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1 and clone your ssd to a larger one then use something like Partition Magic to extend to the full size of the larger ssd.

You could probably get something like this and screw it in where the missing hard drive mount would have been. If you're going to use multiple hard drives you most likely have the space to install a couple of those into your case, or you could use an external hard drive bay instead.

My best guess for why everything in the bottom right is missing is that the previous owner water cooled the pc and installed the radiator there, and took it out before giving it to you. I could be (and probably am) wrong though lol.

probably want a dock for the hard drives. you won't be able to power 3.5 HDs off USB.

for 2x drives: https://www.amazon.com/Sabrent-External-Duplicator-Function-EC-HD2B/dp/B0759567JT

\^could do two of those.

or, all 4 drives on 1 usb: https://www.amazon.com/Sabrent-4-Bay-Docking-Station-DS-U3B4/dp/B07H11KXCL