I cut a Mini D cable that I had laying around to about 10 inches long. I did not open the case so I do not know what the interface is, I suspect it is SATA. I used a seagate 320Gb laptop drive as an internal backup drive in my Windows Home Server. Yes you can connect a USB as an internal drive. In fact, data recovery is one of the major selling points for doing the reverse of what you’re asking - taking the internal hard disk of an otherwise broken machine and installing it into external enclosure. I’ve done this a time or two, and in each case, the data on the hard drive was preserved and immediately available in its new configuration. A note about data preservationĪ you move hard drives from external enclosures to an internal installation (or vice versa), the formatting and contents will likely be preserved. I’ve had the latter happen, and rather than discarding a perfectly good hard drive, I simply installed into a machine. More specifically, if an external drive fails, it could either be the disk drive itself, or it could be the USB conversion circuitry. There’s one additional scenario worth considering: external drive failure. There’s one less external box to deal with, and the drive will probably operate faster internally than across a USB interface.
Moving an external drive into a PC is generally done as a convenience.
Can I Use an Internal Hard Drive from an Old Machine as an External Drive on a New One? covers the topic. While moving an external drive into a computer is possible, the reverse is actually much more common: moving an internal drive into an external USB enclosure. Drive speed is typically not a limiting factor when placed behind a USB interface, and slower drives also run cooler, reducing the need for an external drive to include powerful cooling fans, or perhaps any fan at all. My expectation is that drive manufacturers use their slower drives in external boxes.
This normally limits you to 3-1/2-inch drives, though some computers accept 2-1/2-inch drives.
There are a few things to be aware of before you crack open that box, however.
So yes, open the case and you’ll likely find a standard hard drive you can then install directly into your PC. Depending on the drive, there might be an external power supply, or “ brick”. Most external hard drives are simply standard hard drives in a box with an additional circuit board that converts their native interface to USB. Inside that external hard drive is an internal hard drive. However, there are a few caveats to be aware of. In most cases, the answer is a resounding yes.