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I bought a sata to usb cable to connect the hard drive of my desktop to my laptop and be able to burn some discs. Now my question is how to properly use it. What I'm currently doing is connect the red cable to the sata to usb interface first then connect the power source to the hard drive and then plug it to a power source then finally connect the usb. Once I'm done I just safely remove it just like how I normally remove a flash drive from the notification area in windows. Finally I just plug it out. Is this ok? Won't it damage the hard disk? Should I also shutdown the laptop? Thanks in advance.

soul
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1 Answers1

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I'd say that you're doing it correctly. You want to make sure that you first power on the hard disk and let it spin up prior to plugging in the USB drive into your laptop/computer. I say this because I had a MacBook Pro (circa 2007) and had the USB cable already plugged in. I then powered on the harddrive by plugging in the power source. I heard a loud pop and then realized that my MacBook Pro was turned off and wouldn't turn back on. There was a surge that fried the motherboard!

Another word of caution. It's much easier to move the drive around with it sitting out bare. Whenever the drive is spinning, do not move it around. Sudden jolts to a spinning set of platters can harm the drive. It is best practice to wait until the drive has fully spun down prior to moving it.

Before you unplug the power of the USB hard drive, make sure that you unplug your USB cable. Though this really shouldn't matter, would you want to risk a surge? If you're using 2.5" drives, it's not as big of a worry, but have seen issues (as previously described) with 3.5" drives.

kobaltz
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