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Looking for an external 2.5" HDD Caddy
soapfan_1973
Posts: 3,624 Forum Member
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I have a laptop which no longer works but the hard drive should still have the data on it. It is a 2.5" SATA 1TB drive and I was thinking the quickest way to take the data off would be to use an external caddy, only problem is the ones I can find so far have a maximum limit of 750GB.
Anyone know of an external USB caddy that can support a 1TB drive?
Anyone know of an external USB caddy that can support a 1TB drive?
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http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/USB-3-0-BLACK-2-5-SATA-to-USB-HARD-DRIVE-CADDY-HDD-CASE-ENCLOSURE-/400750155024?hash=item5d4e921510:g:ZoIAAOSwPYZU~ugk
These are dead easy to fit and work.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/TeckNet-Docking-Including-External-Tool-Free/dp/B00IS7Y96I/ref=sr_1_22
Edit: Obviously more expensive than the post that got in before mine
I'm surprised that any of these enclosures have a 750GB limit, it would not really make any sense.
Best place to buy is Amazon because of reviews. Those under £4 things on Ebay might be ok but best avoided.
Having said that, the Amazon one I posted does mention supporting up to 4TB.
Don't think there's a size limit with them is there, never heard of that before.
It's to do with the SATA controller IC hardware. Anything that's got a USB 3.0 IC shouldn't have been paired with an older SATA controller. If the controller is firmware flashable then it might be possible to update it like in a modular BIOS.
But, if something is cheap enough to source, someone will build with it, especially if it only affects a proportion of users. You can still buy SATA drives with capacity lower than 750GB so caddies that can service those sizes of drive will still be sold and used.
Significantly more expensive than the generic ones though.
Never paid more than £6 including delvery from Amazon. I have several and all work fine.
As another poster says limit is not due to caddy.
I wonder if partitioning drive into say 2 500 GB partitions, on another pc would get round problem?
If you could do that, then you wouldn't need the caddy in the first place, would you?
Doesn't the OP just want to get the data off it?
If the disk is the cause of the problem, rather that some other fault, then you should probably try booting the laptop from a linux live disk. Linux can sometimes read disks that Windows has given up on, and anyway it's a no-cost option so there's nothing to lose. Of course, you'll still need some sort of storage to copy the salvaged data to.
I recently bought a usb3 caddy for 3.5" drives (which works with 2.5" too) and the box said works with drives up to 2tb but I tried a 4tb drive and it worked fine. (there are some limits on drives over 2tb in certain circumstances with older OS's)
I think any USB3 caddy should be fine for that size as 750gb isn't particularly big these days. any cheap one should work fine, no need to overspend. icybox is nice, but both mine only work via esata as the USB sockets broke. I did find a £3 esata to USB3 adapter on ebay which works fine and lets me use USB3 instead of sata sockets though