I am planning to purchase a second external hard drive and I am trying to figure out a minimalist setting to use two external drives at the same time (I don’t want to plug two drives into my computer, so ruled out that solution). In addition, I also have a laptop drive at spare. So if there is a way I can use it with my existing external drive, I don’t even need to buy a new drive.
Here is what I am thinking:
Using an external drive docking station. The problem is I need to break my current external drive casing and pull out the drive inside. I am not sure if that internal piece would require some extra circuits, and if it is of standard size (2.5” or 3.5”)
Somehow connect two external drives in serial, so I only need to plug in one drive into my computer to access them both. A slight disturbance is power supply. Not sure if the "main" drive can provide enough current to the secondary drive.
The first way is more economically sound, since I have a spare laptop drive. The second way sounds more robust. But I don’t know exactly whether either of them work.
I understand I can just buy an enclosure for the laptop drive and use it as an external. But my question is how can I use two external drives as I am just using one (with a single connecting cable to my computer).
Answer
If your data is important, you don't want to be doing anything "non-standard".
I would say you have two safe solutions that come to mind:
- Buy a larger external drive.
- Buy an enclosure that supports multiple drives and configurations and install the drives in that. You may need to buy a 2.5" to 3.5" adapter. And depending on the enclosure purchased, the drives may be seen as a single drive by the operating system or separate drives using a single connection.
Note, it's quite possible any "dual" drive solution will likely require separate power whereas a single laptop hard drive connected externally can have power supplied by the computer's USB port.
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