Question about portable hard drive

[brannsiu]

I have got a number of portable 2.5" hard drives, they are either Seagate or WD
I've been hearing about the legend that there is a max. number of plugging and unplugging of the data cable before the port goes wrong,
is it true?
In case the port is damaged after a lot of plugging and unplugging, can I have it fixed or have the enclosure replaced by
myself?

 

[Eximo]

Yes, all mechanical devices have a wear and tear limit.

Yes, you can replace the drive's enclosure with a new one. Or simply plug the drive into an interface to retrieve data. They are typically standard drives on the inside.

If you use a drive often enough to require that much re-pluging, I suggest making that part easily replaceable. Say by using an extension so you are always plugging cable to cable and not enclosure to cable. Cables are cheap, new connectors on enclosures not so much.

 

[robert600]

Yes, you can replace the drive's enclosure with a new one. Or simply plug the drive into an interface to retrieve data. They are typically standard drives on the inside.

That used to be the case but my understanding is that anymore ... not so much ... no longer a standard sata interface ... they've changed to proprietary ones.

 

[robert600]

I have got a number of portable 2.5" hard drives, they are either Seagate or WD
I've been hearing about the legend that there is a max. number of plugging and unplugging of the data cable before the port goes wrong,
is it true?
In case the port is damaged after a lot of plugging and unplugging, can I have it fixed or have the enclosure replaced by
myself?

I use a number of these myself. Thinking of port damage: this can happen at the usb male end of the drive itself (the plug in) but if you look at the cable you will see that at the other end of the cable - it also plugs into the hard drive enclosure ... therefore all you would need is a new cable ... no problem.

It can also happen at the female usb (where you plug the usb into) ... this is more serious ... I use laptops (I presume desktops are the same) ... some of the usb ports are soldered directly to the motherboard, others are stand-alone usb connectors that are connected via a ribbon cable to the motherboard. The ones directly soldered to the motherboard are not an easy fix (not by me at least) ... the stand-alone ones however are very simple to replace. According, if I were worried about port failure ... I would use the usb ports connected to the motherboard via a ribbon cord. Does that make sense?

As I mentioned in the above post ... replacing the enclosure is not as easy as it used to be.

 

[Eximo]

That is making the assumption that the user is not unplugging the cable each time. The idea here is that you don't have much recourse if the port itself fails.

He is right, a lot of the common 2.5" portable drives have the USB controller right on the board with no SATA interface. This doesn't look like a recent change either, but I haven't had a drive fail on me in many years. All the 3.5" drives I looked at still appear to be standard. So if size is not a concern, makes more sense to buy them for longevity. Or buy your own enclosures and loose drives.

On the 2.5" OEM drives you would either have to swap the logic board with a compatible one or get someone to replace the connector.

I have a small pile of these things as historical backups at work. Seagates and WD mostly, whatever is cheapest at time of need. Some old Maxtor (I know right?) still kicking around (There be IDE in them enclosures) They built those like tanks, I even appropriated some of their power supplies for other things. Massive bricks that are oversized for powering a hard drive. I will say that I typically leave the cable plugged into the drive. Knowing that my laptop will see regular replacement and the cable could easily be replaced.

These days, if portability is a must, I think portable SSDs or massive flash drives are the way to go. Unless you need huge capacities.