Worth getting USB 3.0 enclosure for old HDD?

I have a WD 500GB MyPassport which is a couple of years old (2009-2010). Will I be able to see a noticeable speed difference if I remove the HDD and use it with a USB 3.0 caddy instead?

user2550888

Posted 2014-05-06T23:45:59.907

Reputation: 53

The HDD is unlikely going to benefit from any additional bandwidth USB 3.0 would provide. – Ramhound – 2014-05-07T00:05:36.343

Answers

I have done exactly what you're talking about. Mine was a portable Seagate USB 2.0 drive (thankfully no proprietary connector/bridge on that one).

Moving it to a USB 3.0 case improved the sequential read speed from around 30 MB/s to 60 MB/s. Sequential write speeds improved from around 30 MB/s to 45 MB/s. I only used the drive for large files so I can't comment on random read/write performance.

Based on my experience, I am confident you would see similar results. Noticeable improvement? Probably, for sequential reads/writes (i.e. large files).

Worth doing? Maybe not given the attractive pricing of new portable USB 3.0 drives. Besides, the latest USB 3.0 drives are really fast. My new Toshiba portable drive blazes away at over 100 MB/s sequential read and write.

misha256

Posted 2014-05-06T23:45:59.907

Reputation: 10 292

I don't think you'll be able to put this into a standard USB caddy. From what I remember, drives like this have proprietary connectors attached to the drive itself and it'll only work with that specific case. There are however USB 3.0 cases now that are very cheap so it's probably not even worth cracking open your old drive.

Nathan C

Posted 2014-05-06T23:45:59.907

Reputation: 2 522

Thanks! I think they introduced the proprietary bridges to later models so mine should be a standard HDD. Given I can install it to a USB 3.0 enclosure will I see a speed increase? – user2550888 – 2014-05-07T00:05:42.080

Btw, is there a way to check the type of HDD without opening it up? – user2550888 – 2014-05-07T00:06:19.253

If it's SATA, you'll see a sizable increase. USB 2.0 is limited to ~280 Mbits/sec while SATA's maximum bandwidth is 6 Gbps. USB 3.0 allows 4.8 Gbits. – Nathan C – 2014-05-07T00:08:00.313

You may be able to google around with your drive's model to get the internal bits, but my searches pulled the 3.0 version... – Nathan C – 2014-05-07T00:08:33.527