The end of an era - the old drives...

**thelonegunman** · July 3rd, 2012, 08:25 AM

About 12 years ago I built a server with an Athlon XP 1800, half a gig of ram and near enough a TB storage across many drives, it was a pretty elite file server and it's main purpose was to sit 24/7 downloading what I wanted and serving it to PC's and laptops in the house and my friends house 3 doors down (CAT5 - telegraph pole... Enough said).

Well 12 years on and I no longer need this facility, I cannot justify the 24p a day to run it or the money needed to update it, I have moved on, moved out and changed my interests so last week I finally moved everything to my desktop PC and tried to run DBAN on it (that failed to run - stating there wasn't enough memory and no process to kill). Nevermind. So it's ready to be stripped to pieces and scrapped.

But it's got me thinking, there are some good 300GB drives in there, I know I know by todays standard that's pathetic but it seems to me if I could get a USB - IDE caddy I could keep them as long term storage drives. Load them up with 300GB of stuff I would like to have multiple backups of and sling it in a cupboard.

The other 6 drives I think will just get hit with a sledge hammer to be honest but it does seem very wasteful, especially to someone who won't spend a penny more on computing than I need to, ironic really, I saw myself spend every last penny on a 75GB IBM hard drive back in the day.

So what do you guys do when your still good hardware comes to the end of it's useful life?

**tony_j15** · July 3rd, 2012, 09:29 AM

eBay, Craigslist, local swapmeet, electronic recyclers, Gazelle, or forum trader board.

I try not to pitch things unless I have to when it comes to electronics. There is usually someone out there that can use things.

**GroundZero3** · July 3rd, 2012, 09:57 AM

I always wipe my drive and sell them on CL to recoup some cost

**stroyal** · July 3rd, 2012, 10:25 AM

If you are getting an enclosure get one with a power supply.
Most 3.5" enclosures, can be powered, but not all come with a power supply.

Edit
If those drives exceed 500ma/.5amps, and they probably do, you need to power the enclosure, unless they come in USB3.

**MTAtech** · July 3rd, 2012, 11:56 AM

Originally Posted by GroundZero3

I always wipe my drive and sell them on CL to recoup some cost

Me too. I use Eraser and make the drives unreadable then donate them to the local school (they really aren't worth much.)

The other use I have for them is to use a 'clone drive.' Since Win 7 has a good backup image facility, I use a 2nd drive in some of my PCs to backup the image. I also have enclosures attached to laptops for the same purpose.

Sure makes it easy to restore when needed. As an example, my HP laptop had to go back to HP because it had an annoying overheating problem. Well, one of the parts they replaced was the HD.

That would have been a problem had I not created a disk image before sending it. Upon return, I restored it back to the way it was before it left.

**SoloCamo** · July 3rd, 2012, 01:14 PM

Anything of decent size (HDD wise) I keep as secondary storage / backups, even if it's a slower, old ide drive. For example, I still have some pictures/audio backed up onto a 30gb maxtor from 1999! (this is a backup of a backup,. so I don't rely on it of course)

I also use them for testig and what note as well for different OS'es.

This will be your best friend if you do decide to keep them for spares/backups.

Newegg.com - Vantec 2.5"/3.5"/5.25" SATA/IDE to USB 2.0 Adapter - Model CB-ISATAU2

**MTAtech** · July 4th, 2012, 09:47 AM

Originally Posted by SoloCamo

Anything of decent size (HDD wise) I keep as secondary storage / backups, even if it's a slower, old ide drive. For example, I still have some pictures/audio backed up onto a 30gb maxtor from 1999! (this is a backup of a backup,. so I don't rely on it of course)

I also use them for testig and what note as well for different OS'es.

This will be your best friend if you do decide to keep them for spares/backups.

Newegg.com - Vantec 2.5"/3.5"/5.25" SATA/IDE to USB 2.0 Adapter - Model CB-ISATAU2

Actually, I have been using SATA docking stations as external storage. Also, while USB 2.0 is adequate, I've become spoiled to USB 3.0 and eSATA.