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I have a WD 500GB MyPassport which is a couple of years old (2009-2010). Will I be able to see a noticeable speed difference if I remove the HDD and use it with a USB 3.0 caddy instead?

Jon
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user2550888
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2 Answers2

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I don't think you'll be able to put this into a standard USB caddy. From what I remember, drives like this have proprietary connectors attached to the drive itself and it'll only work with that specific case. There are however USB 3.0 cases now that are very cheap so it's probably not even worth cracking open your old drive.

Nathan C
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  • Thanks! I think they introduced the proprietary bridges to later models so mine should be a standard HDD. Given I can install it to a USB 3.0 enclosure will I see a speed increase? – user2550888 May 07 '14 at 00:05
  • Btw, is there a way to check the type of HDD without opening it up? – user2550888 May 07 '14 at 00:06
  • If it's SATA, you'll see a sizable increase. USB 2.0 is limited to ~280 Mbits/sec while SATA's maximum bandwidth is 6 Gbps. USB 3.0 allows 4.8 Gbits. – Nathan C May 07 '14 at 00:08
  • You may be able to google around with your drive's model to get the internal bits, but my searches pulled the 3.0 version... – Nathan C May 07 '14 at 00:08
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I have done exactly what you're talking about. Mine was a portable Seagate USB 2.0 drive (thankfully no proprietary connector/bridge on that one).

Moving it to a USB 3.0 case improved the sequential read speed from around 30 MB/s to 60 MB/s. Sequential write speeds improved from around 30 MB/s to 45 MB/s. I only used the drive for large files so I can't comment on random read/write performance.

Based on my experience, I am confident you would see similar results. Noticeable improvement? Probably, for sequential reads/writes (i.e. large files).

Worth doing? Maybe not given the attractive pricing of new portable USB 3.0 drives. Besides, the latest USB 3.0 drives are really fast. My new Toshiba portable drive blazes away at over 100 MB/s sequential read and write.

misha256
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