"Bootable" USB to hard drive cable...

[Externet]

Greetings.

Went to a local computer repair shop to see if they had for sale any laptop with a side-removable/pluggable hard drive slot. 

 

There are some older ideal candidates but they had none of those for sale.  Intention is to select which operative system hard drive to plug/boot from for the task of the moment. Mostly Win11 or Linux.

The conversation degenerated into choices of

-having two internal hard drives,

-having one hard drive with two OS partitions,

-having two PCs,

-having two USB hard drives and plug the desired one,

-having only one 'special' USB-to-hard drive cable to connect, boot and work with the operative system drive of choice for the task of the moment.

[  USBport-----------------------cable----------------------internalharddrive nowasexternal  ]

He showed and offered me to sell such 'very special' cable apt for booting and available only as a tool for technicians for ~$35.  When I asked about speed performance with that 'special cable' instead of reaching the internal hard drivel bus, he said 'no difference'

What do you know about such 'special-for-booting cable ? looks like

[mistermack]

Those cables are about five dollars on ebay. 

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/175241911041?hash=item28cd3b5b01:g:4lgAAOSwH9tiWB31

Problem is that they take the power supply directly from a USB slot, which will not run a 3.5 inch sata hard disk, and very rarely is enough to run a 2.5 inch laptop disk, it's very hit-and-miss. They do usually run an SSD disk ok, but it's not guaranteed. Depends on how worn the USB slot is.

You can buy a "docking station" which is basically the same thing, but with it's own power supply. Even these are not brilliantly reliable, especially if you try using a 3.5 inch hard disk in them. They are supposed to handle it, but very often don't. They rarely come with a power supply that's got enough juice for the bigger hard disks. Solid state disks are a much better bet. 

Edit: As far as speed goes, USB connection speeds don't match the internal SATA connection, but you can maximise it by using a USB 3 slot and ensuring that the cable you get is USB3 compliant. 

 

Edited June 3, 2022 by mistermack

[Externet]

Thanks.

Pulled my own cable out of the spider webs, changed bios to boot from USB; plugged another Linux drive disabling the internal and booted just fine.  Submitting this post with it.   Yes, only 2.5" drives are in the game.

Next to try in a few minutes is a Windows OS drive.  Will see...  I do not know how to identify which of the 3 ports is USB 1, 2,3...🤔

[mistermack]

The USB slots are likely to be 2 or 3 unless it's an old pc. On my laptop, the usb 3 sockets have a blue coloured insert, don't know if that's standard. 

edit : Another option is a USB memory stick. Less cabling and works fine with the USB supply voltage. Might be a bit slower, but ideal for occasional use. 

https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/QvAAAOSwuAtfSSYK/s-l1600.jpg 

Edited June 3, 2022 by mistermack

[Externet]

Thanks. Operating from USB stick is not to consider.  Has to be hard/SS drives.

Tried old Win98 and WinXP and Win7 hard drives and none booted.  Blue screens and freezing.  Which puts me to think if there is any truth in such 'special' cable that allows booting.  The only unusual UASP thinghy found is ---> https://www.startech.com/en-us/hdd/usb3s2sat3cb  

And wide prices range ---> https://www.ebay.com/itm/192930959131?chn=ps&_trkparms=ispr%3D1&amdata=enc%3A12tKQdbHGQw-hRezvKfEcKA64&norover=1&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-117182-37290-0&mkcid=2&itemid=192930959131&targetid=1599090335937&device=c&mktype=&googleloc=9014268&poi=&campaignid=15275224983&mkgroupid=131097072938&rlsatarget=pla-1599090335937&abcId=9300697&merchantid=113476667&gclid=EAIaIQobChMImdCb_ueS-AIVh6XICh3l1QTcEAQYAiABEgKo8fD_BwE

Perhaps do not know what terminology to search for...

[MigL]

They also sell a USB to SATA cable with a separate power supply, so you can run 3.5 in drives if that is where your OS resides.
I have never had any issues running 2.5 in HDs or SSDs from good quality USB to SATA cables.

[Sensei]

5 hours ago, Externet said:

Tried old Win98 and WinXP and Win7 hard drives and none booted.  Blue screens and freezing. 

...you can't plug in disks formatted and configured for another system, and just plug them into another system.... this will lead to more problems than it solves.... have pendrives with the installation version of the win10/win7 operating system, and plug them into the computer, and install things from scratch from them....

Tip:

Go to

https://www.microsoft.com/pl-pl/software-download/windows10ISO

and press ctrl-shift-m

and pretend other operating system than Windows, (if you won't, ISO won't be downloaded, instead special net-installer version)

to download Windows ISO file, and save it somewhere (e.g. pendrive)

use e.g. Rufus to burn on pendrive to have installation pendrive..

Then you can install Win(X) on laptops without physical CD/DVD (like mine)..

ps. Buy multiple 8 GB+ pendrives.. 5 usd/each for 32 GB here.. one for Win7, other one for Win10 32 bit, another one for Win10 64 bit, and some more for Linuxes..

[mistermack]

I've had windows and Linux operating fine from a memory stick, or even SD cards in a usb adapter. A laptop 2.5 inch SSD drive through the above cable would be the quickest though. You need about 20 gig or more capacity for a bare installation of windows 10. Linux is smaller.

The easiest way to get a working operating system on the drive is to install Macrium Reflect free edition on your system, put your external disk in the USB, and choose "clone this disk". Select the usb as the destination, and it will clone your working operating system to the disk with one click.

AOMEI Partition Assistant is another free one, that will do the job in the same way. They work perfectly for me. Then you just have to adjust the boot options in the bios so that USB boots first.

You need to check first that your external disk is big enough to take all of the C drive that you are cloning. 

[Externet]

12 hours ago, Sensei said:

...you can't plug in disks formatted and configured for another system, and just plug them into another system...

Thank you.  I read about that before.  Hard drive transplants may be possible only to same brand/family compfusers...   The Windows drives I tested were operating internally on that laptop years ago.  They do not now with a USB adapter cable.

How does this work then ? :

Check the description at ---> https://www.ebay.com/itm/394048404931?chn=ps&var=662588638948&_trkparms=ispr%3D1&amdata=enc%3A1oPLEpymjQLWDqbY7bjZz-g51&norover=1&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-117182-37290-0&mkcid=2&itemid=662588638948_394048404931&targetid=1599090334937&device=c&mktype=&googleloc=9014268&poi=&campaignid=15275224983&mkgroupid=131097072938&rlsatarget=pla-1599090334937&abcId=9300697&merchantid=6296724&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIyL2jqK-U-AIVNcmUCR3MOgIeEAQYBSABEgIHdPD_BwE

Buying a drive that has never been in 'that' laptop before, sold with windows activated to be installed on any PC ?  Is that a new or Win10 only thinghy ?

Is there some missing fine print like The receiving PC must have had before a Win10 OS ?

Edited June 4, 2022 by Externet
Added image

[Sensei]

If you install an operating system from scratch, you select and install the correct drivers for the correct hardware... when you connect the disk to other hardware, it may have completely different hardware that is incompatible with what is installed on the disk... config files are screwed/damaged...

[mistermack]

5 hours ago, Externet said:

The Windows drives I tested were operating internally on that laptop years ago.  They do not now with a USB adapter cable.

They should have worked. I suspect that something in the bios prevented them from booting. Maybe something needs to be enabled. Did you just get a message saying "missing operating system" ? That normally means that the bios did not direct the system to the drive. 

I have UBUNTU on a memory stick that will boot to a USB, so I can use that to test if the bios is enabling USB booting. 

5 hours ago, Externet said:

Buying a drive that has never been in 'that' laptop before, sold with windows activated to be installed on any PC ?  Is that a new or Win10 only thinghy ?

I have noticed that with windows 8 and 10, if you put a hard disk in with windows set up on a different machine, when it starts up it automatically starts re-setting itself, adjusting to the different hardware. Windows 10 does it especially quickly. With older versions of windows, it used to take hours before you got a desktop. Now it's minutes. ( depending on the speed of the pc ). Of course the drivers in many cases would be basic windows ones, and would be better when updated but you do get a working system pretty quickly. I wouldn't be happy doing that though, I would prefer a fresh windows installation every time. Just being cautious. 

[Sensei]

On 6/3/2022 at 11:59 PM, Externet said:

What do you know about such 'special-for-booting cable ? looks like

Depends on USB. I am getting max. ~ 25 MB/s which is pretty slow for today standards.. (should be more, but pendrive does not let it go any faster)

SSD should work 550 MB/s, and NVMe should be even 3500 MB/s

with 25 MB/s it's ~ half of obsolete HDD performance..

(just copy one big multi-GB file, and you will see)

Connecting to USB v3.0, in my case, made no difference in speed..

 

Edited July 24, 2022 by Sensei

[Sensei]

On 6/4/2022 at 12:47 AM, Externet said:

Next to try in a few minutes is a Windows OS drive.  Will see... 

..do you know that you can run a Virtual Machine e.g. VirtualBox, with Windows (any version), simulated.. ? Even a couple (if you have >>=16 GB ram especially), parallel..

https://www.virtualbox.org/

It doesn't cost anything. Other than a few GB of disk space. Win10 takes ~ 10 GB, Kali Linux takes ~ 11 GB.

 

On 6/4/2022 at 12:47 AM, Externet said:

I do not know how to identify which of the 3 ports is USB 1, 2,3...🤔

USB v3.0 is blue inside: https://www.google.com/search?q=blue+usb+3 (go to image mode)

On 6/4/2022 at 12:47 AM, Externet said:

I do not know how to identify which of the 3 ports is USB 1, 2,3...🤔

On Windows use Start > cmd, enter "dxdiag", it will tell what hardware do you have i.e. mobo model.. Search net for motherboard model + "specification" and it will tell how many USB ports do you have and in which versions.. some may be v2 and some v3.. v3 compatibility should be able to switch on/off in BIOS (Linuxes don't like v3, have been told, especially if you try to boot from such drive/pendrive.. driver problems etc.).

Edited July 25, 2022 by Sensei