SATA HDD in a USB 3.0 Enclosure?

[krishbish]

I am wondering whether this is possible. I have two HDD's:
160GB Seagate Momentus ST9160821AS (Pretty old now)
Western Digital WD3200BEKT 320GB 2.5" Hard Drive SATAII 7200rpm 16MB Cach

If I was to put either of these into a USB 3.0 external enclosure, and plug into a USB 3.0 socket in my computer say, would it be work to the full capacity of USB 3.0?

I understand that the SATA II drive has a transfer capacity of 3Gbit/s and the USB 3.0 will have a transfer capacity of 5Gbit/s.

Can anyone shed some light onto this as I am not too savy.

Thanks in advance

 

[pepe2907]

No, it will not, the real transfer speed of a HDD is usualy up to ~ 150 MB/s and lower for old and small drives.

 

[krishbish]

No, it will not, the real transfer speed of a HDD is usualy up to ~ 150 MB/s and lower for old and small drives.

Ok, so say I wanted to buy a HDD with separate enclosure, then what do I need to look for when buying the HDD? I know I will need a specific usb 3.0 enclosure for a start.

 

[pepe2907]

It's maybe better if you put it in an External SATA /eSATA/ connected enclosure /actually an usual SATA connection also may do the job, only cables should be shorter/, because there is less buffering/latency. But USB 3 is pretty fast and maybe it doesn't matter...
It's good to have some active cooling /even a very small ventilator does miracles with HDDs.
Besides that ... I suppose it should be solid /good fabrication/... etc.
Nobody can guarantee how good is the USB controller in this enclosure, with SATA it doesn't matter, it's direct.

 

[sminlal]

It is worth it to use a USB 3.0 enclosure for an external hard drive rather than a USB 2.0 enclosure. The USB 2.0 enclosure will limit the hard drive transfer rate to about 35-40MByte/sec, which is a serious bottleneck for most modern hard drives.

No hard drive can actually transfer data at the full speed of USB 3.0 or SATA/eSATA 3Gbit/sec or 6GBit/sec. But if you want to use USB to connect your drive (and there are good reasons to do this, including fewer restrictions on cable length and the ability to plug the drive into virtually any computer made in the last decade), then you'd want to use USB 3.0, not USB 2.0.