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Will buying a USB 3.2 enclosure for my drives increase my transfer speed? (alien.top)

submitted 11 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I have a couple WD 4TB 2.5" drives and a big WD 8tb 3.5" drive that are old USB 2.0 externals in their factory enclosures. If I take out the drives and put them into a USB C 3.2 or Thunderbolt drive boost the transfer / read / write speeds? Something like this? https://www.amazon.com/Inateck-Drive-Enclosure-6Gbps-FE2014/dp/B09SNXJ464/ref=sr_1_6?keywords=3.5%2Binch%2Busb%2B3.2%2Bhard%2Bdrive%2Benclosure%2Bexternal%2Bsata%2Bhdd%2Band%2Bssd%2Bcase&sr=8-6&th=1

or do I need to buy an actual USB C drive like this?
https://www.amazon.com/UnionSine-Portable-External-Storage-Compatible/dp/B0B7RRQGFQ/ref=sr_1_4?keywords=UnionSine&sr=8-4&ufe=app_do%3Aamzn1.fos.17d9e15d-4e43-4581-b373-0e5c1a776d5d&th=1

Or do I need to open up the externals to see what types / speed drives I have in there? Also, if I can just buy the enclosure, the drives are just plug and play in there right? I don't need to download drivers or format them or anything right?

TY in advance

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

No. The hard drives themselves are the bottleneck at ~200-250MB/s, ~1.5-2Gb/s. USB 3.0 is ~480MB/s, 5Gb/s.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

4TB 2.5" drives and a big WD 8tb 3.5" drive that are old USB 2.0 externals in their factory enclosures.

I don't think any drive manufacturer sold 4TB or 8TB drives in USB 2.
Did you mean USB 3?

or do I need to buy an actual USB C drive like this?

USB-C is a connector type. It actually allows for USB 2 speeds. (30MB/s)
If you're going to buy anything get simple USB 3.0 adapters that support UASP. You'll get more than enough performance out of those.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

In my experience, shucking an 8TB WD Elements from its USB 3.0 (5gbps) shell and putting it in an enclosure that’s USB 3.1 gen 2 (10gbps) greatly improved the drive’s performance. In its stock enclosure it would constantly drop connection and freeze during large transfers, but now it is very stable and responsive. The drive certainly does not exceed speeds of 5gbps, being only 5400rpm, so i believe that the factory USB enclosures just suck unfortunately.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

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Drive enclosure failed after two uses (backed by 1 comment)

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