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I would like to know what is the difference between an external hard drive and convert a internal one using an enclosure caddy case? I talk about 2.5" format only.

Which is the best option? there is some difference in performance?

I am deciding if buying:

  1. External mechanical hdd seagate expansion 2.5" SATA III 500GB 5400rpm USB 3.0 8MB cache

Seagate Expansion

or

  1. Internal mechanical hdd WD SATA III 2.5" format, 500GB 5400rpm, 16MB cache and put it inside an USB 3.0 Hard Drive enclosure Caddy Case with support for UASP protocol.

Which option is the best assuming I want to install on it a Linux distro and booting from it? I do not want to make dual boot, I prefer isolate the OSes, each in one hard drive. Also I am not interested in using virtual machines.

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    The difference is mainly who (manufacturer or customer) assembles the enclosure with the harddisk.
    – Bodo
    Commented Jun 23, 2021 at 12:37
  • I have edit my post, see the links.
    – Willy
    Commented Jun 23, 2021 at 13:03
  • Recommendations about specific products or the choice between an "external" harddisk vs. an "internal" harddisk plus an enclosure are probably opinion-based. Such questions are not recommended here. See tour. You should concentrate on technical facts that might aid you in your decision.
    – Bodo
    Commented Jun 23, 2021 at 13:30
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    Just note that some "external/portable hard drives" are not exactly "seperable" as a SATA drive and SATA to USB enclosure. Rather they have electronic board with a USB port directly soldered on the drive inside. (Although as far as I know, the board still have a SATA controller and a USB-SATA bridge chip.)
    – Tom Yan
    Commented Jun 23, 2021 at 14:21
  • I have one USB3 to SATA adapter that works great with my SSD, but would not power up my old HDD. Make sure you have separate power as many USB ports may not have enough power. SATA is a bit faster than USB, but I was surprised my USB3 SSD was almost as fast as internal SSD and faster than 7500rpm HDD. I previously had only used flash drives which were slow on writes.
    – oldfred
    Commented Jun 23, 2021 at 16:08

1 Answer 1

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There is no difference at all. The harddrives used in external enclosures are the same SATA drives used internally.
And in the old days with IDE drives that was true as well.

I have swapped diskdrives between enclosures and internal usage or the other way around dozens of times without any issues.

Sometimes an enclosure with disk happens to be cheaper than the same disk bought on its own. I've purchased a fair number of disks that way. Took it out of the enclosure and put it in a PC. And put an older disk that I had lying around back in the enclosure.

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  • I have edited my post and I have indicated the products. See the links I have provided. What do you think about? better option 1 or option 2?
    – Willy
    Commented Jun 23, 2021 at 13:05
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    Purely based on the drive the larger cache one would be better. As for the enclosure it is anyone’s guess what electronics that Chinese vendor puts inside. And please note that not every computer is capable of booting from an USB harddisk. There is a reason most Linux Live-USB’s present themselves technically as a USB cdrom.
    – Tonny
    Commented Jun 23, 2021 at 13:40
  • Better bare in mind drives like the one in this question do exist: superuser.com/questions/1235871/…
    – Tom Yan
    Commented Jun 23, 2021 at 14:23
  • @Tonny Regarding computer is capable or not, I know there is laptops that does not support it but in my case, my laptop supports USB booting. My BIOS supports it. In fact I have a linux distro installed on an external mechanical hard drive (internal mechanical hard drive + enclosure), and when I want to use Linux, I connect it through USB 3.0, and I boot into Linux without problems. My current external hard drive is going to die very soon so I want to replace it with one new before it stops working.
    – Willy
    Commented Jun 23, 2021 at 15:53
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    @Ralph. Those would be limitations of the enclosure. Not of the drive itself. And any enclosure that would restrict the full functionality of the drive in that way is defective by design. In practice you don't need to worry about this. An enclosure maker would intentionally have to make such an enclosure, using non-standard firmware and non-standard USB to SATA converter chips. It would be much more expensive than a normal one and there is no market for it. Nobody does that.
    – Tonny
    Commented Jun 26, 2021 at 10:33

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