Repurposing Old Drives

OspreyO · 3 Jan 2022 at 19:49

As I upgrade my storage I find my older drivers, 1TB HD and 120GB SSD are a bit redundant. All replaced now with 4TB and 512~1TB drives. Even my Flash drive has been replaced with a 512GB Tough SSD.

In particular the 120GB SSD drives. I was wondering if anyone sticks a bunch of them together as single volume, in a 5.25 to 2.5 adapters. Or just long term storage. Main machine is a laptop, though I do have an old PC the kids use. At the moment I have them in external enclosures.

OspreyO · 3 Jan 2022 at 19:53

I think some 2.5" external rack would also be another possibility. Possibly pointless though.

throwaway4372 · 3 Jan 2022 at 20:04

just wipe and bin them, you'll never use them.

MagicBoy · 3 Jan 2022 at 20:14

Put the 120GB in a cheapo £5 USB caddy, use it as backup or portable storage? Gotta be quicker than a pendrive...

I took my old 512GB SSD, tossed it in a caddy and it's now used as extra storage for older games on my Xbox.

throwaway4372 said:
just wipe and bin them, you'll never use them.

Username checks out. :cry:

Semple · 3 Jan 2022 at 20:16

The SSDs could definitely be used, but mechanical drives take up a lot of space.

EsaT · 3 Jan 2022 at 20:39

In 2.5" USB box that SSD could be used as fast portable storage device.
You can find USB sticks cheaply per GB, but good luck for finding one with actually good write speed to fill that capacity in reasonable time...

OspreyO · 3 Jan 2022 at 21:18

Yeah given up on flash drives. Speeds are bad and they are expensive and built poorly. I've had two 256Gb fail.

OspreyO · 3 Jan 2022 at 21:22

Semple said:
The SSDs could definitely be used, but mechanical drives take up a lot of space.

They are all 2.5 drives. But I'm decluttering so they add up.

Mcnumpty2323 · 5 Jan 2022 at 12:27

Could shove them in the kids pc
And use storage spaces to combine them
Either for some extra storage
Or to store some image backups of the kids pc
Or for a second copy of D drive etc
If they already have a second drive for data
Never tried storage spaces with multiple drives in external caddy
So not sure if that's doable
But I find it useful for old ssds 120 to 500gb I no longer use

Cyber-Mav · 5 Jan 2022 at 16:29

Sell the old drives. Lots of people want small ssd for use in small projects etc. I used one in an old laptop and put one in an arcade cabinet

Mcnumpty2323 · 5 Jan 2022 at 16:41

Yeah could sell them
To fund something else
Though doubt you will get a great amount for them
Though if selling them
Make sure to secure delete them
Not just format them as it's too easy to recover