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I'd wish to upgrade my laptop's internal drive, and put the original one in an external enclosure to use it via USB. I could buy an 2.5" HDD and a 2.5" tray separately to accomplish this. However, this would cost more than buying a complete portable HDD and swap the two drives. Also, there are portable 4TB drives, while internal ones arrive to 2TB maximum.

I know that the great majority of portable drives are engineered to function as external disks only, having no SATA interface and the Micro-B USB directly (e.g. WD's My Passport and Elements). I wanted to know if anyone got to open a Maxtor STSHX-M401TCBM or a Samsung STSHX-M401TCB, or already knows for some reason exactly what's inside. Is there a SATA interface, or just the USB one?

Also, what's the difference between the two? Is the HDD inside the same Seagate, and the enclosure is made by Maxtor in one case and Samsung in the other? The enclosures look the same, apart from the brand written on it.

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I bought a Maxtor M3 4TB drive and made a small teardown of it. The disk inside is Seagate Barracuda ST4000LM024 and has a normal sata-connector.

TL; DR; Atleast my Maxtor STSHX-M401TCBM has a normal SATA-interface present.

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  • These plastic cases should be avoided, they completely catch the heat. Like you I usually "loot" the disc (and the nice small SATA-USB adapter) and put it in an aluminium case. Sadly, these Seagate 3+ TB drives are 15mm thick, whereas external cases usually support up to 9mm drives… – Gras Double Aug 5 '18 at 2:17

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