Naked SATA harddrive to eSATA port

[danielsbrewer]

Does anyone know if you have a SATA harddrive, a SATA to eSATA cable and an external power supply for the SATA harddrive whether you can use the naked HD as an external drive without an enclosure?

The power supply would be something like this:
http://www.amazon.com/Sata-Drive-Power-Supply-Adapter/dp/B002HH4EC4

Thanks

[hessiess]

You could, but you would have to be extremely careful not to damage the drive, for example not letting the drives control bored touch anything conductive.

[sharathpaps]

I had an enclosure for my 250 Gb SATA drive but it broke and this is how I use it now... So far I've not had any problems. But like hessiess said.. Its better to be safe than sorry...

[HavocXphere]

The difference between eSATA and SATA is the shielding of the cable. So do keep the cable fairly short if you are using an unshielded cable. You don't need a conversion per se, the connectors just need to fit.

And make sure you "safely remove" it ever time.

[handy]

I've run a couple of 32GB Raptors just sitting on my desk unclothed for extended periods, (noisy things they are), your machine must be a notebook if you have to use an external PSU for the drive, I just stuck an extension cable on an output from the tower case PSU.

[Krupski]

Does anyone know if you have a SATA harddrive, a SATA to eSATA cable and an external power supply for the SATA harddrive whether you can use the naked HD as an external drive without an enclosure?

The power supply would be something like this:
http://www.amazon.com/Sata-Drive-Power-Supply-Adapter/dp/B002HH4EC4

Thanks

Absolutely yes it will work. However you should place the hard drive on something like a mousepad or a small magazine to protect it from mechanical shock and, more importantly, to protect the exposed circuit board.

If you are just doing this as a temporary means to copy data to or from the hard drive, fine... but it's a bad idea to use it like this as a permanent installation.

The chances of damaging the open, unprotected drive are quite high.

Why not buy a hard drive enclosure?

-- Roger

[handy]

It comes down to what goes on in the location where the drive is laying.

If it isn't a high traffic area, & you are the sole user of the computing space, I can't see why there is any need to spend up on a case for the drive.

I've used my drives on the desktop on more than one instance, two of which exceeded a year, with no troubles whatsoever.

It basically comes down to the individual's use of the space available. Some situations/circumstances are safe, some aren't.

[danielsbrewer]

I've run a couple of 32GB Raptors just sitting on my desk unclothed for extended periods, (noisy things they are), your machine must be a notebook if you have to use an external PSU for the drive, I just stuck an extension cable on an output from the tower case PSU.

Actually its an Acer revo nettop, so I can't really extend the power supply from the case without a great deal of hacking

[danielsbrewer]

Thanks for all the replies ... its nice to know its possible at the very least.