Is it possible to make a flash drive as a hard drive. How to make a hard drive from usb
Have you purchased a new, fast solid state drive (SSD) and your old one is lying around? Give it a new task and use it as an external storage device. To do this, you only need a case with a SATA controller; it is available for both 2.5" and 3.5" models. For the latter, a power supply is required, while compact drives have enough power supply through the USB port.
Labor intensity: average, costs: 600 rubles.
Mini NAS on router
In all home network need access to the same data? To do this, you do not need expensive and bulky network storages(NAS) - This task can be performed by a USB drive if it is connected to your router. Newer devices are equipped with the corresponding port.
First you need to format the USB drive from under Windows OS in file system NTFS and then just connect it to the router. In this case, the latter must have a USB port and must support the appropriate functionality. Now by typing in address bar browser address 192.168.1.1 (or similar), you will be taken to user interface router.
Go to the " USB settings | General access to the storage device" (for TP-Link routers, for other devices, the name of the menu items may be different) and make sure that the disc starts up.
To access data on a home network, it will be enough to windows explorer type the address like "\\192.168.1.1\Volume1". A permanent connection is achieved with a click right click mouse over the folder to which you plan to allow access, and selecting the item "Connect network drive».
Labor intensity: low, costs: no
Flash drive instead of a password
There is also a practical use for a small USB flash drive. For example, when you sign in to Windows, you can unlock your computer without entering a password. To do this, you need the Rohos Logon Key tool (1450 rubles), Predator (650 rubles) or free USBLogon (http://www.rohos.ru/products/rohos-logon-free/).
After installation, you need to select the connected USB drive and configure the security settings. After entering Windows password flash drive is ready to go. Unfortunately, working with USBLogon is complicated by the German-language interface, but even without knowledge of German, it is easy to figure it out.
Labor intensity: average, costs: no
flash drive for emergencies
If the computer no longer works as it should, a bootable USB flash drive comes to the rescue. The Sardu tool (http://www.sarducd.it/) installs up to 20 different antivirus programs, and in addition, provides at the disposal various versions Linux and other first aid software.
> Training: in the left sidebar, the selected software is listed by category. Check necessary programs checkmarks. We recommend choosing multiple antiviruses and a Linux version (e.g. Ubuntu).
> Flash drive creation: on the right sidebar, click on the symbol with the USB drive. You can start creating a bootable flash drive.
> Use in an emergency: to use a bootable flash drive in case of an "accident", you need to change the boot sequence from the drives in BIOS Setup.
In this case, you should set the boot priority from USB to HDD. Then select the desired program from the list. Don't forget to revert your BIOS changes after "repairing" your computer.
A photo: manufacturing companies, racum/Flickr.com
Many users may have noticed that any programmer who comes to fix problems related to the system has a . This trick is very useful, because for any problem with the system or hard drive, the user can always restore access to the computer and understand what the problem with the computer is. In this case, not everyone wants to have a system in a computer, where it is easier to carry a small system disk from additional files. Therefore, anyone should know how to make a hard drive out of a flash drive.
But how to turn a flash drive into a hard drive? It would seem that such a process should be difficult and resource-intensive, but in fact everything is carried out quite simply, while the volume and “age” of the flash drive does not matter. The main condition for a flash drive is that it works properly. Also, not only a USB flash drive, but also an SD card is suitable for this role, the process of changing properties is identical.
At the same time, it is worth knowing that multi-partitioning should not be applied to such external media, since many operating systems support only the first partition on non-HDD-type disks. HDD is non-removable media that is installed in a computer. You can remove them, but it takes a lot of time and effort, so people use cards and external drives to facilitate the whole process of transferring information or operating system right with you.
First you need to make sure that Windows detects the USB flash drive as a non-removable device. In this case, any flash-card has a standard reverse parameter, then you need to start changing. Some do not think at all about the safety of their equipment, so they simply modify the flash drive. But this method is dangerous because many flash drives simply cannot change to the selected parameter, because of which they will break and they will have to be carried in service center. It is much easier and safer to replace the response from the device with the desired result. For this, a special driver is installed. A flash drive instead of a hard drive on Windows 7 will work just like with any other operating system.
Before making a flash drive a hard drive, the device must be connected to a computer, and then determine the type of flash drive.
First option
Open the Media Manager. You can find it using the "Run" button, enter "diskmgmt.msc" here and press "Enter". Now it will be possible to see what type the drive has, removable or non-removable.
Second option
You can also see the type of device by opening the Volumes tab in the properties of the flash drive.
Third option
You can also enter the diskpart command.
So, now the user knows whether the flash drive is a removable or non-removable device in this case.
Second step
If the device is defined as "non-removable", then it can already be used as a hard drive. IN otherwise, before using a flash drive instead of a hard drive, its type must be changed to "non-removable". For this, a special filter driver is used, which can easily change the incoming information, changing it to the necessary one. One of the most common and simple filters is the Hitachi Microdrive driver. Thus, the user does not invade the microclimate of the flash drive, while simply deceiving his system, giving it a false answer.
After the media becomes non-removable, the computer will consider it a full-fledged hard drive that can be partitioned, each of them will function simultaneously. The main thing at this point is to download a program that is suitable in terms of bit depth for your operating system.
Third stage
Once the user has been able to trick the computer, the device code can be identified. You can find the code in the "Details" tab, "Device Instance Path".
As a result, it is necessary to copy the information, it will be further manipulated in the Hitachi Microdrive program. When copying, you must remove all information after the second "\".
On a 64 bit system
Now you need to find the cfadisk file in the Hitachi Microdrive folder, where we find the cfadisk_device and cfadisk_device.NTamd64 sections.
In sections, instead of information after "\", we insert the code of our device.
On a 32 bit system
The process is similar, only in the file for the 32-bit version you need to find the "cfadisk_device" section.
Here you need to replace "DISK&VEN_&PROD_USB_DISK_2.0&REV_P" with the device code.
If you want to set your own name for the device, then you need to replace "Microdrive_devdesc" with the desired name, say "USB_hard".
Fourth stage
The last step is to replace the drivers. On 64-bit operating systems, before this action, you must disable the check digital signature driver so that it does not update itself due to third-party interference.
You need to open the "Drivers" => "Update Drivers" tab. Next, the folder with the Hitachi Microdrive driver is indicated. This driver is selected, it remains to skip the message about the absence of a digital signature, then restart the computer and see the result of the work. The drive has become non-removable.
The driver is removed using the "Update drivers" button.
Here's how easy it is to make a hard drive from a flash drive. This procedure can be carried out by anyone, if you follow the instructions, while the computer cannot be damaged at all, as well as the drive system. If you use a high-quality volumetric external drive with good performance, then there are no questions whether a flash drive can be used instead of a hard drive. In this case, it will cope with the task no worse than hard drives.
Boot USB Flash or HDD drive is convenient because you can refuse to use CD / DVD for OS installation and use diagnostic programs like Memtest, MHDD, Acronis TI.
A “multi-boot” flash drive or HDD is good because you don’t have to format the entire disk for each program, but install all the necessary programs there once and, when booting from it, select the one you need through a beautiful menu. In the case of an HDD, it is convenient to create a separate small partition for this.
There are many solutions for flash drives (for example, http://eee-pc.ru/wiki/soft:usb_multiboot), but, as a rule, they do not work with USB HDD. On Habré, I only found about installing Win7 from a USB HDD, but a year ago, attempts to reproduce this were unsuccessful. For Windows installation 7 from a flash drive, there is MS Win7 DVD Tool, but again it does not work with the HDD. So let's create our own multiboot USB HDD using GRUB4DOS.
We will need:
- USB HDD (everything described should work for flash drives).
- Windows OS (of course, you can do it in the same way from a Linux-based OS, but now I don’t have the opportunity to check the performance and the presence of “pitfalls”).
- Motherboard (BIOS) with support for booting from USB drives. If booting from USB is not supported, you can use Plop, more on that below.
UPD: automation of this method: rghost.ru/20467691 or greenflash.su/_fr/7/7487664.7z. Files from the archive (except for menu.lst and seven.iso) must be copied to the root of the partition (or change the paths in Menu.lst accordingly).
Possible problems and errors
Error 60: File for drive emulation must be in one contiguous disk area
Solution: The image needs to be defragmented. For example, using the Contig program from Mark Russinovich. Usage: contig.exe g:\ubuntu1.iso in console.
BIOS does not support booting from USB, freezes, takes a long time to boot, and other problems associated with booting from USB HDD
I hope this article helped you figure out how to create a multiboot hard drive or flash drive.
A more detailed manual on GRUB4DOS is available (translated into Russian, sometimes crooked) or in README_GRUB4DOS from the archive with GRUB4DOS.
UPD1: re-upload the script from the 2nd method win7: made a mistake and uploaded old version, it had problems with x64.
UPD1.1: added automated 3 way win7.
No matter how difficult the installation of the OS is, and my opinion is that it is enough to be friends with the computer and have two more hands in addition to the head - one right and the other left. To install an OS on a computer, you need or.
But what if there is neither one nor the other, it does not work optical drive, or do you have a netbook? After a little thought, I remembered that I have an external usb-pocket for the HDD and a free old HDD 2.5ʺ is also there. In general, if there is HDD-pocket, respectively, it can be made bootable.
For this purpose, there are utilities with which you can do this, but I decided to use the standard Windows tools.
There are a lot of descriptions and videos on the network, but, unfortunately, there is one problematic point that the authors for some reason omit. Well, okay, I'll start in order.
Preparing an external HDD
Before working with a disc, be sure to transfer and save the necessary information from this disc to another medium.
All settings will be made standard means Windows 8.1. There may be some differences from previous releases of Windows, but if there are, they are not significant.
First of all, I want to note that to make an external HDD bootable, more comfortable. I divided the disk into two partitions, one contains the Windows distribution, the other partition is for my needs.
1. Connect usb-pocket and go to Disk Management.
Attention! All data on the disk will be destroyed!
If you have Windows 8.1 installed on your PC, right-click: Start / Disk Management;
If Windows is over early versions, open the Computer Management console: Start / Control Panel / Administrative Tools / Computer Management / expand Storage Devices / left click Disk Management.
2. Choose an external HDD disk. Be extremely careful, if you choose another disk by mistake, all information will be destroyed.
In my case, this is Disk 1. As you can see in the screenshot, the disk is divided into two volumes (partitions):
3. Delete disk partitions:
4. Create new disk partitions. One for the distribution, the second will remain for your needs:
Right-click on a free space on the disk context menu choose a team Create a simple volume:
5. In the Create Wizard window that appears simple volume, press the button Further:
Specify the volume size of 4404 megabytes and click Next. Please note that the size is indicated in megabytes. And since 1 gigabyte is equal to 1024 megabytes, then 1024 × 4.3 = 4403.2 megabytes is obtained under the distribution section (the weight of mine is 4.18 GB for example);
In this dialog, you need to format new section(FAT 32), click Further then Ready:
6. After that, you need to make the created partition active. (don't forget, because the computer will boot from this partition), for this:
Right mouse click, select the command in the context menu Make section active.
To the request for confirmation, we answer YES.
7. In the same order, we format the second partition on the disk, preferably in NTFS, but do not make it active.
Copying Windows to the active partition of an external HDD
copying Windows distribution to a bootable external HDD is quite simple and easy.
From bootable DVD:
Open the installation DVD in Explorer, select all folders and files, and copy to the active partition of the external HDD;
From ISO image but:
By and large, an ISO image is a kind of archive. So you can open it with any archiver. You can also open the ISO image via Total Commander or Daemon Tools. Well, if you have Windows 8 or 8.1 installed on your PC, then open it with Explorer. Select all folders and files, and copy to the active partition of the external HDD;
That's it, your external HDD can act as bootable media. Just reboot and set USB HDD as boot priority in BIOS (depending on BIOS type).
- When you turn on your laptop, press F2, to ;
- Go to tab Boot;
- IN Boot Priority order install USB HDD;
- Click F10, and then OK.
If not, then check out the article.
Save your changes and get started.
As you can see from the text, preparing an external HDD for installing Windows is quite simple. And my description will not be complete if I do not talk about one problem, which for some reason is rarely written about on the net.
Making a hard disk partition active
When I divided the hard disk into two volumes, for some reason unknown to me, none of the disk partitions could be made active. This function was not available in the context menu.
The partition from which the computer boots is called active.
There are two ways to make a partition active:
- Using the Computer Management console. We have already considered this method, but, unfortunately, for a number of reasons, the Make Partition Active command is not available. The solution to this problem is also not difficult. Remember how to prepare bootable flash drive from the command line.
- Using the Command line, through the utility diskpart. The second way is a little more complicated, but more effective. You just need to do all the operations carefully and slowly.
Setting the active partition using the command line
1. Connect external USB HDD;
2. Click Start/All Programs/Accessories/ Command Prompt. Press the right mouse button and select Run as administrator.
3.
In the window that opens, write the command diskpart and press the button Enter. A prompt for working with the utility will appear - DISKPART>;
4.
Enter command list disk and press the button Enter. You will see all disks installed on your computer;
5.
Select the disk with which we will work. To do this, enter the command select disk 0, where "0" is the disk number in the list, i.e. for my external drive there will be a team select disk 1. Click the button Enter, the message Disk 1 selected;
7.
Select the section with which we will work. We enter the command select partition 1, where 1 is the section number in the list, i.e. for the section that we make active. Click Enter, a message will appear Section 1 selected.
8.
We mark the selected partition as active, to do this, enter the command active. Click the button Enter, a message will appear DiskPart: partition marked as active.
That's all. Good luck.
Introduction.
Most laptop owners sooner or later face the problem of lack of space on. As a rule, laptops up to and including 15 inches do not have a free second slot for a 2.5 inch device. Therefore, owners are forced to think about either replacing the laptop itself, or replacing its hard drive. After replacing the hard drive, it always remains old drive, which can be easily converted into an external USB drive for data transfer.
Naturally, you can purchase a mobile 2.5 inch hard drive and turn it into external drive. Fortunately, the cost of external drives allows this. For example, at the time of writing, a 250 GB mobile hard drive costs $40, while a 500 GB device from WD costs only $45.
Decide on the type of hard drive.
In fairness, it should be noted that an ordinary desktop 3.5-inch hard drive can also be turned into an external drive - you just can’t call it mobile anymore. If you have an unused 2.5 or 3.5 inch hard drive, then first of all you need to determine the type of its interface.
To date, the following interface types exist on the market: IDE (ATA) and various SATA options. As a rule, all SATA interfaces are backward compatible with each other, and we will not dwell on their variations. The situation is completely different between IDE and SATA interfaces, which are absolutely incompatible with each other and have different connectors.
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The figure shows two hard drives with different interfaces. Winchesters have a mobile format of 2.5 inches. On the left is a hard drive with SATA interface, on the right is a hard drive with an IDE interface.
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In our hands was a 250 GB hard drive from western digital Scorpio Blue series with SATA interface. This drive been used for a long time in Acer laptop, but its capacity was not enough, and it was replaced by a more capacious 500 GB solution.
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Despite long-term use, the hard drive did not cause any complaints, so it was decided to use it as an external mobile drive. To do this, it was necessary to find an external case for him, which we did. External case AGESTAR for 2.5 inch mobile hard drive.
Computer hardware stores offer a wide variety of external cases for 2.5 inch hard drives. Their key difference is this:
- body material,
- type of external port (interface),
- cost.
As a rule, various cases are presented in stores with USB interface 2.0, there are much fewer cases with eSATA interface, even fewer cases with their combination of USB 2.0 & eSATA. Several cases with a modern USB 3.0 interface were found on sale, but their cost exceeded the cost of the hard drive itself, so we did not consider them.
The key difference between USB 2.0 and eSATA is the transfer speed. Using the USB 2.0 interface allows for maximum compatibility, as these ports are available on all computers. A significant disadvantage of the USB 2.0 interface is - low speed data transfer, which will not allow you to unlock the full speed potential of your hard drive.
The eSATA port is more promising, but it is not common and is found only in expensive versions of motherboards, cases and laptops. The eSATA interface allows you to fully unlock the potential of SATA devices.
The material of manufacture can also be very different. Simply put, it's plastic. In more expensive variations, an aluminum case with a leather case is included.
The cost of external cases also varies. The cheapest option will cost the user 3 dollars, expensive versions will cost more than 100 dollars.
Purchasing a $100 case for a hard drive that costs less than $40 when new and is half the price once it's in use is wasteful to say the least. Therefore, for testing, we were given a case worth a symbolic 3 dollars - AgeStar SUB2P1. Completion and external inspection AgeStar SUB2P1.
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From a device worth three dollars, we did not expect any miracles, both in terms of equipment and in terms of performance. The device comes modestly packaged in a package. The front wall of the device is covered by a cardboard box listing the key characteristics of the device. It is support for 2.5 inch mobile hard drives or solid state drives with SATA interface, the presence of a transmission interface USB data 2.0 and various options colors.
In fairness, it should be noted that our suppliers have confirmed that they have not seen any other than the black color of this case.
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After opening the package, we were pleasantly surprised by the fact that the set includes an instruction manual completely in Russian.
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The case is completely made of plastic. There are paper stickers on the front wall indicating the model, which will be erased in any case, so we recommend that you immediately remove them from the surface of the device.
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The material of the case is soft black plastic, which does not smell anything, is uniform throughout its structure.
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The covers of the device come off in two different directions, which makes it easy to remove and install the hard drive in an external case.
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The two sides of the outer case are fixed with a plastic latch made from the material of the case. Thanks to the recesses on the walls, the lids are securely fixed and spilling a glass of liquid, or leaving the device in the rain, is unlikely to lead to any problems.
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The device is designed for SATA hard drives, which we have repeatedly emphasized. Inside soldered controllers with SATA ports for power and data transfer.
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Mini is soldered on the side wall USB port to transfer data and power the hard drive. There is no additional port to provide power to the drive, which may cause some problems for users. With a weak power supply that lowers the voltage along the 5 volt line, you often have to deal with problems starting the hard drive. As a rule, connecting the drive directly to the port on the motherboard, and not on the case system block, the use of quality USB cable allows you to forget about this problem.
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Sellers of computer components often talk about the presence of a USB data cable in the kit as an advantage of one or another external case or offer to purchase it separately if it is not. We advise our users not to pay attention to this, as a mini-USB-to-USB cable is usually found in almost every family and is often supplied with mobile phones. In our case, we successfully applied a stale data cable from mobile phone Nokia.
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The next step is to install the hard drive in the case. This is done quite simply - by light pressing. Most importantly, first rotate the hard drive correctly according to the SATA power and data ports located in the case.
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The absence of any protruding elements on the hard drive controller circuit allows you not to worry about its rear surface during transportation and use of the device.
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Some users may argue that the plastic case does not provide adequate heat dissipation from the hard drive. Naturally, external cases made of aluminum cope with this task much more effectively. At the same time, we should not forget that mobile hard drives do not have such a high power consumption to suffer from overheating, and in laptops, as a rule, they are not cooled by anything else.
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After the assembly of the device is completed, the stage of its testing and use begins. The power supply to the device is accompanied by the glow of the blue LED, which also symbolizes the user about the data transfer process. It should be noted that not everyone will have a smooth start with the created external drive. If the hard drive has already been used, it has been formatted and partitions have been created on it, you will not have problems getting started. It will be defined as a regular USB flash drive using the Plug & Play method. But for those users who have purchased a new hard drive without formatting and with no partitions, there will be a problem that will be associated with the absence of a drive letter in the "My Computer" tab.
To do this, you need to create partitions on the hard drive and format it. This can be done through various boot disks, but it's better not to bother and do it in the Windows operating system itself.
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To do this, you need to go to the "Control Panel" through the "Start" section, then visit the "Administrative Tools" section. IN this section select "Computer Management", where in the "Disk Management" tab you can partition and format the newly connected external drive. After creating partitions, formatting them, you will have access to them through the "My Computer" tab and you will be able to exchange with the drive, as with a regular hard drive. Test configuration.
The assembled external drive was tested both on a desktop computer, based on a modern processor core i7 and no less modern motherboard, and on the Acer Aspire 7730 laptop based on the Core 2 Duo processor. It should be noted that the level of performance on two different systems turned out to be comparable equal.
1. Data reading speed was tested in HD Tach 3.0.4.0
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It's nice to note that the external drive we've assembled shows much more high level performance than the previously tested external hard drive WD My Passport Essential. Max Speed data transfer was 34.3 Mb / s, and the average delay was about 17.9 ms.
2. Data reading speed in HD Tune 4.5.
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In the second synthetic test, we got similar data to the previous ones, which also turned out to be somewhat better than that of the official WD My Passport Essential external hard drive.
3. The speed of writing files of 64 MB in HD Tune 4.5.
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Somewhat more valuable is testing close to practice, by writing 64 MB files. IN this test we got quite expected results, which were also limited only by the capabilities of the USB 2.0 interface.
Separately, I would like to note that during the entire testing, the temperature of the hard drive did not exceed 35 degrees Celsius, while a similar hard drive installed in a laptop had a temperature of about 43 degrees. Therefore, users will not need to worry about the working conditions of the hard drive in this case.
4. Operating download speed Windows systems 7.
In the course of practical testing on the speed of loading the image of the Windows 7 operating system, we received similar results for other external drives with a USB 2.0 interface.
5. Evaluation of drive performance in Windows environment 7.
We tested the performance of the external drive we assembled using the Windows 7 operating system. To do this, in command line you need to call the command: "winsat disk -drive g -ran -write -count 10", where "g" is the letter of the drive under test in the system.
From the test results, it can be seen that the drive we assembled received a much higher rating than the factory WD My Passport Essential solution. 
Conclusion.
Based on the materials of this article, it is clear that any mobile hard drive can be turned into a good external drive without any hassle. Especially for testing, we asked to provide us with the cheapest external case, worth $ 3. Three dollars allows you to get an excellent external drive from a mobile hard drive, at least for data storage. Not to mention the fact that the same external case facilitates the recovery of data from the hard drive of "dead" laptops.
Despite the fact that AgeStar products are criticized by many for their low quality, after many years of using it, I have only a positive impression of it. First of all, it is for a democratic cost. Marriage occurs in all manufacturers, even if AgeStar has a slightly higher figure than Thermaltake. But the latter has no analogue to the presented external case for three dollars and with a guarantee of 6 months. We award AgeStar products with a gold medal for the best performance/price ratio.
