2.5" Hard Drives With SATA Connectors

[drfsupercenter]

So I'm looking for 2.5" drives larger than 1TB for use in game consoles, laptops and such. The height isn't a huge deal, I'm aware that 3TB ones will be too big to fit in most laptops but 2TB ones should be 11.5mm.

Ideally we'd have a chart or something, but here goes.

Based on what I've heard from others - when it comes to portable external drives:

• Seagate portable externals are standard SATA drives in enclosures
• WD is almost always NOT that, and hasn't been for years. Their earlier ones were, possibly as large as 2TB.
• Toshiba is a weird one - they started out being SATA drives with an adapter, but later went the WD route.
• HGST used to make them as well before the WD/Toshiba buyout stuff. No idea if those use an adapter or not but I don't think they ever made them above 1TB anyway.

I found this video showing the disassembly of a Toshiba HDTC615XK3B1 which clearly uses SATA. Comments mention that the newer ones no longer do. One nice thing about Toshiba drives is that they have the model number on the sticker.

Can anyone comment with model numbers of portable externals you've gotten and whether they use SATA or have the USB port soldered directly to the PCB? I'd love to find a 2TB (or larger, for other purposes besides a laptop) that isn't Seagate, due to my personal bad experiences with Seagate drives almost always dying prematurely.

As far as drives actually sold as internals without the fluff of being in an enclosure...

• WD has the 500GB and 1TB portable series (also some older ones including a 750GB I think got discontinued)
• Seagate has 1, 2, 3, 4TB models to go along with said externals
• HGST has 500GB and 1TB models
• Toshiba I'm not too sure about.

Nothing larger than 1TB that isn't Seagate as far as I know

 

[Evan]

The 2TB WD from old externals are 15mm
Are you sure 12.5mm fits in consoles , I would expect 9.5mm and 7mm only

 

[pyro_]

One thing to keep in mind is that the 2tb 2.5" Seagate drives are actually Samsung spinpoints which Seagate now owns after they bought out Samsung HD devision. I believe the model number on the drive is the M9T and it is on 9.5mm thick. I believe it is the same thing for the 3/4tb versions as well in that they are spinpoint devision drives

 

[drfsupercenter]

Xbox One definitely will, at least the original model - I used one of the Seagates in mine, and it doesn't actually fit in a specific size enclosure, it's just resting on a pedestal, plenty of room for even a 15mm.

Maybe I'm confusing 9.5mm and 12.5, I haven't exactly taken a ruler to measure them. I know PS4 fits 9.5mm drives. I was using the ST2000LM003 in my Xbox One before trading up to the 2TB Xbox One S (which also uses a Seagate as far as I know) - that's a 9.5mm according to the specs.

I did have a bigger WD external that I dropped and broke, opened that up for fun and it has the USB connector soldered to it, despite being thicker (maybe 15mm, but more likely 12.5, it's a 2TB.) That's not as old of a drive though, it was new enough to be a My Passport "Ultra" or whatever.

 

[Evan]

7mm = slim, some newer notebooks
9.5mm = most notebooks
12.5mm = some notebooks
15mm = standard server 2.5" disk

Any can be used in externals of course

 

[drfsupercenter]

One thing to keep in mind is that the 2tb 2.5" Seagate drives are actually Samsung spinpoints which Seagate now owns after they bought out Samsung HD devision. I believe the model number on the drive is the M9T and it is on 9.5mm thick. I believe it is the same thing for the 3/4tb versions as well in that they are spinpoint devision drives

I know that Seagate bought Samsung's hard drive division, but I was under the impression that "Samsung" drives are actually Seagate, and not vice versa. I've seen "Samsung Momentus" for example, which are just Seagate drives but with the Samsung logo on them.

But this is interesting, the drive I have is a ST2000LM003, which Googling turns up this spec sheet on Seagate's website - but it has Samsung logos on it despite using the "ST" prefix. Huh. So are these truly Samsung drives and not Seagate's? I don't know how much different they are but I've had much better luck with SpinPoint stuff than I ever did with Barracuda/Momentus. Those drives have always died on me. I had a couple really old SpinPoints (from before Seagate bought them) and they worked until I eventually stopped using them due to getting larger drives.

 

[pyro_]

I am not going to say that all of them are but would lean towards the spinpoint series drives being Samsung designed