In doubt, whether your PC would last you or not? Worried about all your important files and data on it? It is quite common for a computer to die, when this happens you can always convert the old hard drive into an external unit using drive enclosures and grab important files off the drive in the process. Another common problem professional and corporate workers go through are storage issues.
What Exactly is a SATA Drive Enclosure?
A drive enclosure is a specially designed chassis or a cover box that is used to hold or cover a hard disk drive. Different types of enclosures use different interfaces. However, the most common is USB 3.1, but these also come in eSATA, FireWire, NVME, and much more.
A SATA hard drive enclosure is a physical case that houses and powers a hard drive. These enclosures can be connected to a host computer through a USB cable with no external power required.
Most often, computers come with at least 40 and 80 GB internal storage, which may be insufficient for most users with extensive work on data at some point in time. Disk enclosures come in handy and provide additional storage for your device and work requirements. Other than storage, disk space, and external connectivity, disk enclosures can also be used in the following cases:
- If you fear hard drives being damaged, these cases act as solid physical protection for hard drives.
- These enclosures can easily support hot-swapping with an inexpensive and the simplest configuration available from the best of brands.
- These can be added or removed whenever required, which means adding a removable backup capability with a distinct power source from the connected device.
- These can be easily connected to digital media recorders, small form factor, laptops, computers, and gaming consoles for adding additional storage space.
- The devices that don't have RAID (redundant array of independent disk) can use enclosures to add those capabilities.
- If your computer heats a lot because of loads of data or slows down in between processes, a SATA drive enclosure can reduce the cooling requirements inside the computer.
- For recovering data from a broken or damaged computer.
- In case you want to lower the cost of removable storage by reusing the hardware designed for internal use.
- Used for protecting sensitive data and confidential files when a virus attacks computers.
From small businesses to independent professionals working from home, can add enclosure drives for added security for data recovery. Likewise, if your system is just working fine and you just want to protect your data and have an additional backup. Since many a time when a computer system fails it is generally because hard drives die and the data in it remains inaccessible and non-retractable. In this case, only swapping the hard drive with another hard drive enclosure may be the only solution available so that the data can be accessed again. For increasing the storage capacity, users can simply turn to use external hard drive enclosures which help to convert the working hard drives from older desktop computers into external hard drives.
As you might have known by now that when your external hard drive fails, you can still recover your data. But how? You just need to pull out the hard drive inside and put it into a new enclosure. As it is the enclosure that fails most of the time and not the hard drive. And if your computer dies and you still have a hard drive that still functions, then that can also be used with the help of an enclosure. If your intention is merely to derive all the data, put your hard drive in the case and pull out all the important files.
However, before making a purchase the user should look for a case that is compatible along with the disk drive size and the original drive's operating system. Based on what connections you have, determine the kind of external hard drive enclosure you will require.
