03-08-2009, 12:36 PM
Just finished updating my storage from 250gig drives to 1T drives and I now have 4 or 5 250 gig drives left over. Anything useful I can do with them ???
Brian
Brian
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Spare Drives - too many drives left over ?
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03-08-2009, 12:45 PM
03-08-2009, 12:49 PM
Brian,
IDE or sata? If sata, you can pick up one of the cheap USB drive Docks and still use them. OR, if they're IDE, you can pick up a external enclosure that supports drive trays and put them to work. Otherwise, ebay them or donate them to people who could use a more spacious hard disk drive. 250 gigs is still a useful amount of storage. It can easily hold a slew of stuff, i.e. movies, music, backup personal docs, etc. Robert
03-08-2009, 12:52 PM
I would have said Drobo them but that all depends on what interface they use. The problem with re-using (re-packaging) old drives is that by the time you buy a new enclosure for them, it may just be as cheap to buy a brand new external HD.
For instance, I have a couple of 60-gig and 100 gig PATA HDs...what am I going to do with them? It's really not worth going out and buying for $30-$40 a new PATA enclosure for them when I can take the $100-odd that I would have spent and get myself a massive 1TB drive.
03-08-2009, 01:59 PM
Iron,
True. But, I have no problem spending that much money on an enclosure that allows easy hot swapping of drives. Even two or three 100 gig drives can make an excellent rotating backup system. Yes, a single high capacity drive is more cost effective when it comes to price per megabyte (or, nowadays, per gigabyte). But, if you don't have that spare $100 (which will only get you a USB 2.0 external or a bare mechanism), $50 is a reasonable price to pay to keep existing hardware viable. Even then, that enclosure will still be useful for newer drives in the future. Case in point... When my G5 tower went boom and Apple replaced it with a Mac Pro, I kept the second hard disk drive I had in it. Rather than selling or dumping the drive, I bought an enclosure and put it back to work as a backup drive. That drive lacks the storage I need for backups. So, I'm getting a new drive and using the 250 gig drive with a USB 2.0 drive dock I got for $9 or so after rebate for my popcorn hour. It's going to be the first stage in digitizing my movie collection. Robert
03-08-2009, 03:57 PM
PATA? Have a TiVo? They can handle two drives with a bracket and give you HOURS of recording fun!
03-08-2009, 06:52 PM
Shoot, I'm still running with a pair of 160's in my G5. That would be a nice little upgrade!
03-09-2009, 11:33 PM
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