Let me start of with this forums really needs a DIY/mods Section
So I’ve done some preliminary testing with 2.5" usb3 controllers store bought ones, was able to get the two I’ve got for testing to work the 3.5" hdds pretty easily just by adding, read soldering, 12v+GND rails from a psu to (3) 12v corresponding pins on sata power connectors.
Testing with some older 3.5" 160gb and 1TB hdds no problem,however when i tested with a 3TB drive from another enclosure windows wanted to format it, now is this controller limit? as the drive is formatted on its original enclosure as GPT (not sure on the block size) and it shows as 2000gb as formatted and 700gb unallocated space, I didn’t want to format this drive as it was just test case and had data on it,
So much question is, are these controllers limited to 2TB max capacity? as I see we 5TB 2.5" hdds now do they need updated controllers/new enclosures to get capacity or adjust blocking size work?
How did you format? Sometimes WIndows won’t clear the whole drive if there’s an encrypted volume on it. You have to format through the Powershell disk utility.
If you bought the controllers recently, they shouldn’t be SAS-1 and wouldn’t have the 2TB limit, I don’t think. Mayge ‘get-disk’ will give you some info.
Well the 3tb I tested is formatted already GPT, on it’s original 3.5" usb3 controller, its a WD My book external drive just took the drive out, to test on 2.5" controller it picked up but windows wanted to format and disk management showed 2tb formatted but unreadable and 700gb unallocated nothing I haven’t already said before,
The drive is formatted GPT and has data on it, on the original WD My book controller, just when I swap controllers it shows what I’ve already said above. Think I’ll just empty out another 3TB drive and format it with 2.5" controller and see what happens.
These are the controllers i want to use, cant get them pretty cheaply, $6 equivalent;
ORICO 2139U3-PRO-CR 2.5 inch Transparent USB3.0 Hard Drive Enclosure
Turns out with 3tb drive I tested from my internal drives work fine on the controller, I guess I need to start building this thing now, Also don’t see why larger drives 4~10TB wouldn’t work either.
