Convert old system drive to external USB

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Hi All,
If I find a USB enclosure for my old SATA system drive, can I connect it while the system is running and use Disk Utilities to convert it from active primary to a logical drive? There are a few items I would like to grab out of it before I nuke it clean. If so, any recommendations for an enclosure?

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If I find a USB enclosure for my old SATA system drive, can I connect it while the system is running and use Disk Utilities to convert it from active primary to a logical drive? There are a few items I would like to grab out of it before I nuke it clean. If so, any recommendations for an enclosure?

It”m not quite in agreement with your terminology, but you should have no problem connecting an old system drive via a USB enclosure – provided you don’t accidentally boot from it! It will just be another primary drive. The enclosure recommendation will depend somewhat on what is sold in your vicinity, or on Amazon, or wherever – remembering that you need to get one corresponding to your drive type: check the SATA speed (150 or 300).

BATcher

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BATcher,

My concern was forgetting to disconnect it and having 2 such drives at boot. I wanted to know if I could change the drive to logical without losing any data.

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My concern was forgetting to disconnect it and having 2 such drives at boot.

You can have as many bootable hard drives connected as you like (also bootable CDs, DVDs, or USB Flash Drives). But you can only boot from one of these at a time… So the Logical Drive question is academic!

BATcher

Plethora means a lot to me.

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Mark, if this is a Windows drive, there is no need to fiddle with changing the drive type, just delete all the files in the root of the drive and then it won’t be able to boot. You’ll get a message about missing ntldr. Then you’ll know that your USB drive is connected!

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