Protect your hard drive or SSD – Raspberry Pi and projects

If you’re doing project work with your Raspberry Pis or softmodding a games console you’ll often want to use a small, 2.5 inch hard drive or SSD for USB storage. These can easily be converted to USB 3 drives with a simple cable, but if you’re going to be using it in a project you really should be looking at protecting the drive, especially if you’re using one like this old laptop hard drive that has bare solder points on the bottom circuit board. Stray wires or metal surfaces can short these connections and destroy the drive.

The best way do make your drive safe is with a drive enclosure which you can pick up for under £10. Almost the same cost as a USB converter cable.

These enclosures both protect the drive, its connector and also include the USB 3 converter cable.

Simply slip the drive out of any caddy it’s currently in.

Slide it onto the SATA connector in the case.

Pop on the lid.

Connect the cable.

And you’re good to go.

I’m using this one as a USB games drive for my softmodded Wii. I’ll put a link to the project video in the description.

As you can see the drive can be hidden behind the TV without worrying about touching the metal stand or getting knocked about.

The Wii recognises it straight away and is able to read the game files directly over the USB interface.

So that’s just a quick tip to keep your drives safe.

Buy A Drive Enclosure

https://amzn.to/3OBMDW5